The secret entrance was discovered: men were breaking through its walls! Living beings were about to appear, pillagers of tombs, no doubt, come to unswathe them all! But no! Only some priests of Osiris, advancing with fear in a funeral procession.

They brought nine great coffins containing the mummies of nine kings, his sons, grandsons and other unknown successors, down to that King Setnakht, who governed Egypt two and a half centuries after him.

It was simply to hide them better that they brought them hither, and placed them all together in a chamber that was immediately walled up.

Then they departed.

The stones of the door were sealed afresh, and everything fell again into the old mournful and burning darkness.
Slowly the centuries rolled on--perhaps ten, perhaps twenty--in a silence no longer even disturbed by the scratchings of the worms, long since dead.