Page:Taylor - In the Dwellings of the Wilderness.djvu/40

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The Forbidden Door


the inscription intently. Then he compared it with the copy he had made, and with various pages of his notebook. From time to time he mumbled unintelligibly. At last he turned upon them.

"I thought it was a tomb," he observed with satisfaction. "If I'm not mistaken, with this short time to go over it, the inscription says something like this: 'Whoso cometh, now or hereafter'—hereafter?—yes, that's right—'wake not the soul that sleeps within.'"

"He must have wanted to sleep sound, whoever he was," Holloway observed with flippancy. "Can't we make a beginning? If the old man's still here, I'd like to collect him before it gets too dark."

Soon a force of men was at work, a

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