I saw that Tom was serious.  So I tried to draw him out.

“What language do they speak, Tom?” I asked.

“Them, sar?  They speak Egyptian,” he answered, with perfect solemnity.

“Egyptian!”

“Yes, sar,” said Tom.

“Egyptian?—­but who’s going to understand them?”

“There’s always some old wise man or woman in every village, sar, who understands them.  You remember old King Coffee in Grant’s Town?”

“Does he know Egyptian?”

“O yaas, sar!  He knows ’gyptian right enough.  And he could tell you every word them birds says—­if he’s a mind to.”

“I wonder if Tobias knows Egyptian, Tom?”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised, sar,” he answered; “he looks like that kind of man,” and he added something about the Prince of the Powers of the Air, and suggested that Tobias had probably sold his soul to the devil, and had, therefore, the advantage of us in superior sources of information.

“He’s not unlike one of those black parrots himself, is he, Tom?” I added, for Tom’s words had conjured up a picture for me of Tobias, with his great beak, and his close-set evil eyes, and a familiar in the form of a black parrot perched on his shoulders, whispering into one of his ugly ears.

However, we continued with our digging, and Tobias continued to make no sign.

But, at the close of the third day from our discovery of John Teach’s wine cellar, something happened which set at rest the question of Tobias’s knowledge of Egyptian, and proved that he was all too well served by his aerial messengers.  The three days had been uneventful.  We had made no more discoveries, beyond the opening up of various prosaic offices and cellars that may once have harboured loot but were now empty of everything but bats and centipedes.  But, toward evening of the third day, we came upon a passage leading out of one of these cellars; it had such a promising appearance that we kept at work later than usual, and the sun had set and night was rapidly falling as we turned homeward.

As we came in sight of the house, we were struck by the peculiar hush about it, and there were no lights in the windows.

“No lights!” the “King” and I exclaimed together, involuntarily hurrying our steps, with a foreboding of we knew not what in our hearts.  As we crossed the lawn, the house loomed up dark and still, and the door opening on to the loggia was a square of blackness, in a gloom of shadows hardly less profound.  Not a sound, not a sign of life!

“Calypso!” we both cried out, as we rushed across the loggia.  “Calypso! where are you?—­but there was no answer; and then, I, being ahead of the “King,” stumbled over something dark lying across the doorway.

“Good God! what is this?” I cried, and, bending down, I saw that it was Samson.

The “King” struck a match.  Yes! it was Samson, poor fellow, with a dagger firmly planted in his heart.