WHEN the Hon. Robert Curzon was in Egypt he prevailed on a Coptic carpenter to show him the carefully-concealed library of a ruined Coptic monastery near Thebes. Mr. Curzon was to go alone at night with the carpenter to the tomb where the precious treasure was concealed. The son of the carpenter made the third member of the party. Stumbling over ruins, among low hills and narrow valleys, the howl of the hyena often in their ears, at last they came to something like a gravel pit, in which was the entrance to an ancient tomb. Into this tomb, covered with hieroglyphics, they went, and the carpenter produced the books, eight or nine in number, all brown and musty. With their candles stuck in the ground, Mr. Curzon and the carpenter, who could read both Coptic and Arabic, proceeded to examine the contents of the books. While poring over them they thought they heard a noise, but the carpenter said: "No one knows of this tomb or of the holy manuscripts it contains. There can be nothing here to make a noise. Are we not here alone, a hundred feet under the earth, in a place where no one comes?" So they returned to the examination of the books. Suddenly a roar as of a hundred wild beasts seemed all around them. It ceased, but began again as if legions of infernal spirits were let loose. Mr. Curzon and the carpenter jumped from the ground; the carpenter's son, in his terror, stumbled over the great manuscript, fell upon the candles, and put them out in a moment. His screams were added to the terrible uproar which resounded through the cave. Seeing a star twinkle through the vista of the two outer chambers, all three ran for their lives, their fright increasing to desperation when they perceived that something was chasing them, while the roar seemed to increase every moment. No sooner had they reached the open air than the evil one came forth in bodily shape, and stood revealed in the pale light of the newly risen moon.11 "Father," said the carpenter's son, after a moment's silence, "if that is not old Fatima's donkey, which has been lost these two days; it might have starved to death but for our finding it to-night." Mr. Curzon goes on to say that "on some foundation like this many well-accredited ghost stories may have been founded. The echoes of the subterranean cave so altered the sound of the donkey's bray that I never should have discovered that these fearful sounds had so undignified an origin."—Selected.