Page:"The Mummy" Volume 2.djvu/337

Rh when he was stopped by a rough arm, whilst a man in a gruff voice demanded what he was doing there?

The doctor looked up, and finding with horror that he was surrounded by eight or ten armed Spaniards, answered, in trembling accents, "that he was making gunpowder."

"Gunpowder!" exclaimed one of the men. "But what were you doing with those balls?"

"I was boiling them," replied the doctor, with great awe.

"You seemed to be playing with them, I think," resumed the man. "Were you running after them to make gunpowder?"

"Yes, they wouldn't stay in the pot; and I was obliged to run after them, to catch them."

The soldiers burst into a horse-laugh at this naïve reply, and their merriment offered a ridiculous contrast to the doctor's woful visage. They now prepared to retire, dragging the doctor with them, totally heedless of his supplications for pardon and declarations of innocence. They declared him to be a spy, and swore that they would hang him as such as soon as they