I had dreamed of finding something in Carter's Meadow; golden ornaments, things that I had heard had been found in tombs. This was very different. I was disappointed for a while and then I began to develop a burning enthusiasm for the task itself. I could think of little else than the wonder of uncovering the record of the rocks.

Our lessons with Evan Callum were taken in the afternoons, because the mornings were spent with Miss Graham or Oliver Shrimpton learning what were called the three Rs. Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. In addition, Theodosia, Sabina, and I had to do needlework with Miss Graham and three mornings a week we worked for an hour on our samplers. The alphabet had to be worked, a proverb, our names, and the date. Naturally we chose the shortest proverb we could find but even so the task was laborious. Horrible little cross stitches on a piece of cotton and if one stitch was too large or too small it had to be unpicked and put right. I was in revolt against such time wasting and I was so frustrated that my sampler suffered through it. There was music and we strummed on the piano under

Miss Graham's supervision, but now we had Grey Tabby it was decided that she should give the music lessons. So with our periodic lessons in archaeology our education was running on quite unconventional lines. We had our teachers from three sources—Miss Graham from Keverall Court, Grey Tabby and Evan Callum through Giza House, and from the rectory Oliver Shrimpton. Dorcas was delighted. It was an excellent way, she said, of three families pooling their educational resources and providing an excellent education for the young people involved. She doubted that anywhere in the country a girl was getting such a well-grounded training. She hoped, she added, that I was making full use of it.

What did intrigue me were the sessions with Evan Callum. I told him that when I was grown up I should go with expeditions to the far places of the world. He replied that he thought that as a female I might find this difficult unless I married an archaeologist; but all the same he encouraged me. It was gratifying to have such an apt pupil. We were all interested but my natural enthusiasm was perhaps more intense and more obvious.

I became particularly fascinated by the Egyptian scene. There was so much to be discovered there. I loved hearing about that old civilization; the gods that were worshiped, the dynasties, the temples that had been discovered; I caught my enthusiasm from Evan. "There's a treasure store in the hills of the desert, Judith," he used to say.

Of course I pictured myself there, making fantastic discoveries, receiving the congratulations of people like Sir Edward Travers.

I had imagined myself having long conversations with him but he, I must say, was a disappointment. He never seemed to see any of us. He had a strange far-away look in his eyes as though he were looking far back into the past.

"I expect that awful old Tybalt is just like him," I said to Hadrian.

Tybalt had become a new word which I had introduced into our vocabulary. It meant "mean, despicable." Hadrian and I used to tease Sabina with it.

"I don't care," she said, "nothing you say can change Tybalt."

I was fascinated by Giza House though and although I was a hopeless musician I used to look forward to going there. As soon as I entered the house I would become excited. There was something peculiar about it. "Sinister," I told Hadrian who agreed as he usually did with me.

In the first place it was dark. The bushes which surrounded the house might have been responsible for that, but in the house there were so many" rich velvet curtains— not only at windows but over doors and alcoves in which were often strange images. It was so thickly carpeted that you rarely heard people come and go and I always had the sensation in that house that I was being watched.

There was a strange old woman who lived at the top of this house in what appeared to be an apartment of her own. Sabina referred to her as Old Nanny Tester.

"Who is she?" I demanded.

"She was my mother's Nanny and Tybalt's and mine."

"What's she doing up there?"

"She just lives up there."

"But you don't want a nanny now surely."

"We don't turn old servants out when they have served us many years," said Sabina haughtily.

"I believe she's a witch."

"Believe what you like, Judith Osmond. She's old Nanny Tester."

"She spies on us. She's always peering out of the window and dodging back when we look up."

"Oh don't take any notice of her," said Sabina.

Every time I went to the place I looked up to the top window for Nanny Tester. I had convinced myself that it was a strange house in which anything could happen.

The drawing room was the most normal room, but even that had an Oriental look. There were several Chinese vases and images which Sir Edward had picked up in China. There were some beautiful pictures on the walls—delicate and in pastel shades; there was a big cabinet in which were Chinese figures—there were dragons and fat Buddhas with sly sleepy looks and thin ones sitting with apparent comfort in a position which I had tried unsuccessfully to copy; there were ladies with inscrutable faces and mandarins with cruel ones. But the grand piano gave the place an air of normality and it was on this that we strummed out our lessons under the tuition of Grey Tabby who was as enigmatical as one of the Chinese ladies in the cabinet.

Whenever I had an opportunity I would peep into other rooms forcing Hadrian to look with me. He was reluctant but he was afraid not to do as I wished because he knew that I would call him a coward if he refused.

We had been studying with Evan Callum some of the lore of old Egypt and I was greatly fascinated. He gave us an account of some recent discoveries there in which Sir Edward Travers had been involved; and then he went on to give us a little insight into the history of that country.

When I listened to Evan Callum I would be transported out of the schoolroom into the temples of the gods. I listened avidly to the story of the self-begotten god Ra—often known as Amen Ra; and his son Osiris who with Isis begot the great god Horus. He showed us pictures of the masks which priests wore during religious ceremonies and told us that each god was represented by one of the masks.

"The idea being," he explained, "that the great gods of the Egyptians possessed all the strengths and virtues of men, but in addition they had one attribute of an animal; and this animal was their particular sign. Horus was the hawk because his eyes saw all and quickly." I pored over the pictures he showed us. I was an apt pupil.

But I think what interested me most were the accounts of burials when the bodies of the important dead were embalmed and put in their tombs and there left to rest for thousands of years. With them would often be buried their servants who might have been killed merely that they might accompany them and remain their servants in the new life as in the old. Treasure was stored in their tombs that they might not suffer poverty in the future.

"This custom, of course," Evan explained to us, "has led to many of the tombs being robbed. Throughout the centuries daring men have plundered them . . . daring indeed for it is said that the Curse of the Pharaohs descends on those who disturb their eternal rest."

I was very interested to hear how it was possible to keep a person's body for centuries. "The embalming process," Evan explained, "is one which was perfected three thousand years before the birth of Christ. It was a secret and no one has ever really discovered how the ancient Egyptians did it so expertly."

It was absorbing. There were books with pictures. I was never tired of talking of this fascinating subject; I wanted to ignore other lessons for the sake of going on with Evan.

Sabina said she had seen a mummy. They had had one at Giza once.

Evan talked to her about it and I was a little envious that Sabina who had not taken particular note of it should have had the opportunity which I should have made such use of.

"It was in a sort of coffin," said Sabina.

"A sarcophagus," supplied Evan.

"We've still got it, I believe," said Sabina. "But the mummy has gone." She shuddered. "I'm glad. I didn't like it. It was horrible."

"It was interesting," I cried. "Just imagine. It was somebody who had actually lived thousands of years ago!"

I couldn't get the thought of it out of my mind and a few days later when we went for our music lesson I decided that I was going to see it. Theodosia was at the piano. She was better than the rest of us and Tabby gave us extra tuition.

I said: "Now is the time." And Sabina led us to that strange room. This was the one, of course, which I had heard about, the room which gave the servants "the creeps" and which they wouldn't enter alone.

I saw the sarcophagus at once. It stood in a corner of the room; it was like a stone trough. Along the top of it were rows of hieroglyphs.

I knelt down and examined them.

"My father is trying to decipher them," explained Sabina. "That's why it's here. Later it will go to some museum."

I touched it wonderingly. "Just imagine . . . thousands of years ago people made these signs and someone was embalmed and laid inside there. Don't you think that's wonderful? Oh, how I wish they'd left the mummy!"

"You can see them in the British Museum. It's just like someone done up with a lot of bandages."

I stood up and looked about the room. The walls of one side were lined with books. I looked at their bindings. Many were in languages I could not understand.

I said: "There's a strange feeling in this room. Are you aware of it?"

"No," said Sabina. "You're trying to frighten us."

"It's because it's dark," said Hadrian. "It's the tree outside the window."

"Listen," I said.

"It's the wind," said Sabina scornfully. "And come on. We mustn't be found in here."

She was relieved when she shut the door behind us. But I couldn't forget that room.

For the next few days I looked up everything I could find about ancient burials. The others were impatient with me because when I had an idea I was obsessed by it and would talk of nothing else. Sabina was very impatient and

Theodosia had begun to agree with everything Sabina said.

She declared she was tired of all this talk about mummies. They were nothing but dead people anyway. She had heard that if they were exposed to the air and the wrappings removed they all crumpled to dust. Why get excited about a lot of dust?

"But they were real people once. Let's go and look at the sarcophagus again."

"No," wailed Sabina. "And this is my house, so if you go without me you're trespassing."

"I believe you're afraid of that room," I declared.

She indignantly denied this.

I became more and more obsessed and wanted to know exactly what it felt like to be embalmed and laid to rest in a sarcophagus. I forced Hadrian to join me and together we found some old sheets and one of these we cut into strips, and when we all went to Giza House for our music lesson Hadrian and I contrived to have ours first and then we went into the garden where we had hidden our sheets and bandages in an old summerhouse. We retrieved them and together we went into the room in which was the sarcophagus. I put the sheet over my head—having cut holes in it for my eyes—and made Hadrian bind me up with the bandages. I scrambled into the sarcophagus and lay there.

My only excuse is that I was young and thoughtless. It just seemed a tremendous joke—and an exciting one too. I thought I was very brave and bold to lie in that sarcophagus alone in the room for I had twinges of doubt and felt that my boldness might arouse at any moment the wrath of the gods.

It seemed a long time before the door opened. Sabina said: "Oh, why do you want to keep looking at it . . ." And I knew Hadrian had brought them in as we had arranged.

Then they saw me. There was a bloodcurdling scream. I tried to scramble out of the trough-like receptacle which smelled peculiar and was so cold. It was the worst thing that I could have done for Theodosia, seeing this thing rising from the dead, as she believed, began to scream.

I heard Hadrian shout: "It's only Judith."

I saw Sabina was as white as the sheet which was wrapped round me; and then Theodosia slid to the floor in a faint.