Then she took me by the hand and led me to where she had last seen Heliodore.

“She has vanished away,” she said, “here is nothing but rock.”

“It cannot be,” I answered.  “Oh! that I had my eyes again, if for an hour, I who was the best tracker in Jutland.  See if no stone has been stirred, Martina.  The sand will be damper where it has lain.”

She left me, and presently returned.

“I have found something,” she said.  “When Heliodore fled she still held her basket, which from the look of it was last used by the Pharaohs.  At least, one of the cakes has fallen from or through it.  Come.”

She led me to the cliff, and up it to perhaps twice the height of a man, then round a projecting rock.

“Here is a hole,” she said, “such as jackals might make.  Perchance it leads into one of the old tombs whereof the mouth is sealed.  It was on the edge of the hole that I found the cake, therefore doubtless Heliodore went down it.  Now, what shall we do?”

“Follow, I think.  Where is it?”

“Nay, I go first.  Give me your hand, Olaf, and lie upon your breast.”

I did so, and presently felt the weight of Martina swinging on my arm.

“Leave go,” she said faintly, like one who is afraid.

I obeyed, though with doubt, and heard her feet strike upon some floor.

“Thanks be the saints, all is well,” she said.  “For aught I knew this hole might have been as deep as that in the Chamber of the Pit.  Let yourself down it, feet first, and drop.  ’Tis but shallow.”

I did so, and found myself beside Martina.

“Now, in the darkness you are the better guide,” she whispered.  “Lead on, I’ll follow, holding to your robe.”

So I crept forward warily and safely, as the blind can do, till presently she exclaimed,

“Halt, here is light again.  I think that the roof of the tomb, for by the paintings on the walls such it must be, has fallen in.  It seems to be a kind of central chamber, out of which run great galleries that slope downwards and are full of bats.  Ah! one of them is caught in my hair.  Olaf, I will go no farther.  I fear bats more than ghosts, or anything in the world.”

Now, I considered a while till a thought struck me.  On my back was my beggar’s harp.  I unslung it and swept its chords, and wild and sad they sounded in that solemn place.  Then I began to sing an old song that twice or thrice I had sung with Heliodore in Byzantium.  This song told of a lover seeking his mistress.  It was for two voices, since in the song the mistress answered verse for verse.  Here are those of the lines that I remember, or, rather, the spirit of them rendered into English.  I sang the first verse and waited.

“Dear maid of mine, / I bid my strings Beat on thy shrine / With music’s wings.  Palace or cell / A shrine I see, If there thou dwell / And answer me.”

There was no answer, so I sang the second verse and once more waited.