The Forbidden Door
fifty feet wide, bounded on either side by towering walls of earth. That it revealed a section of the ancient palace was to be inferred from the fragments of brick pavement, the bases of a line of broken pillars deep bedded in the ground. In the side of the trench where the men were gathered, a fragment of wall, rising nearly ten feet in height, with a walled-up doorway, was visible. Merritt, arriving breathless, took command, restraining too ardent impatience on the part of the workmen. Carefully the earth was removed and the find laid bare.
"Looks like a tomb," said Holloway, leaving his camera and coming up. "Bricks, laid in bitumen, as usual. Hi! look out, you fellows! careful with your tools, there! There's an inscription over
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