Page:"The Mummy" Volume 1.djvu/233

Rh its waters, confirms the fact. Indeed, I am only surprised that any human being, possessing a grain of common sense, can entertain a single doubt upon the subject."

"How do you account for the tomb we are about to visit being placed in the Pyramid, if you think they were only designed for a temple?" asked Edric.

"The question is futile," said the doctor. "A strange fancy prevailed in former times that burying the dead in consecrated places, particularly in temples intended for divine worship, would scare away the evil spirits, and the practice actually prevailed in England even as lately as the nineteenth or twentienthtwentieth [sic] century. Indeed, it was not till after the country had been almost depopulated by the dreadfully infectious disease that prevailed about two hundred years ago, that a law was passed to prevent the interment of the dead in London, and that those previously buried in and near the churches there, were exhumed and placed in cemeteries beyond the walls."

Edric did not reply, for in fact his ideas were