The workmanship of the object was excellent, that of a fine artist who, I should think, had taken some living infant for his model, perhaps a child of the Pharaoh of the day.  Here I may say at once that there could be no doubt of its Egyptian origin, since on one side of the head was a single lock of hair, while the fourth finger of the right hand was held before the lips as though to enjoin silence.  Both of these peculiarities, it will be remembered, are characteristic of the infant Horus, the child of Osiris and Isis, as portrayed in bronzes and temple carvings.  So at least Ragnall, who recently had studied many such effigies in Egypt, informed me later.  There was nothing else in the place except an ancient, string-seated chair of ebony, adorned with inlaid ivory patterns; an effigy of a snake in porcelain, showing that serpent worship was in some way mixed up with their religion; and two rolls of papyrus, at least that is what they looked like, which were laid in the niche with the statue.  These rolls, to my disappointment, Harut refused to allow us to examine or even to touch.

After we had left the sanctuary I asked Harut when this figure was brought to their land.  He replied that it came when they came, at what date he could not tell us as it was so long ago, and that with it came the worship and the ceremonies of their religion.

In answer to further questions he added that this figure, which seemed to be of ivory, contained the spirits which ruled the sun and the moon, and through them the world.  This, said Ragnall, was just a piece of Egyptian theology, preserved down to our own times in a remote corner of Africa, doubtless by descendants of dwellers on the Nile who had been driven thence in some national catastrophe, and brought away with them their faith and one of the effigies of their gods.  Perhaps they fled at the time of the Persian invasion by Cambyses.

After we had emerged from this deeply interesting shrine, which was locked behind us, Harut led us, not through the passage connecting it with the stone house that we knew was occupied by Ragnall’s wife in her capacity as Guardian of the Child, or a latter-day personification of Isis, Lady of the Moon, at which house he cast many longing glances, but back through the two courts and the pylon to the gateway of the temple.  Here on the road by which we had entered the place, a fact which we did not mention to him, he paused and addressed us.

“Lords,” he said, “now you and the People of the White Kendah are one; your ends are their ends, your fate is their fate, their secrets are your secrets.  You, Lord Igeza, work for a reward, namely the person of that lady whom we took from you on the Nile.”

“How did you do that?” interrupted Ragnall when I had interpreted.