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Wherever a "tazia" or tomb is a-building, there gather all the Mohurrum performers, the Nal Sahebs or Lord Horse-shoes, the tigers and the mummers of Protean disguise. The spot becomes an "Akhada" or tryst at which the tomb-builders entertain all comers with draughts of sherbet or sugared water, but not with betel which has no place in seasons of mourning.

But there is no inherent sacredness in prices. A picture is worth only what it will fetch. Let our artists be satisfied with a fair day's wage for a fair day's work, like any other species of craftsman. After all, they were all craftsmen Michael Angelo, Titian, Donatello, Canova wall-decorators, door-painters, ceiling-colourers, tomb-builders, stone-masons, working to contract and to measure.

On this morning, when he was hurrying through his dressing so as to be in time for breakfast, always a matter of difficulty with him, even though he had many hours in which to put on his few clothes, he shrank from thinking about the arrival of the girl who was coming to live with her brother in this strange valley, which had been the underground cemetery for countless centuries of the tomb-builders of Egypt.

"At the present time he has just unearthed a small staircase in the sand and a bit of a brick wall, which may lead to the tomb he is looking for, or they may end in nothing, for sometimes the ancient tomb-builders began to dig and work upon a tomb and eventually abandoned the site as hopeless the sand was too soft, which meant the constant falling of sand before they struck a foundation of rock, or for some other reason so after days and days of excavating we find that the whole thing is a fraud, just the mere beginning of a tomb which was never finished.

The discovery yesterday had been nothing more or less than the first indication of a narrow flight of steps, cut in the virgin desert rock, a stairway probably built by the tomb-builders for the use of the workmen, in order to carry away baskets of sand and rubbish without slipping.