This was the chamber of the tombs of the kings, and its floor echoed to their footsteps, now hollowly, now with ringing clearness.

Three sides of the mighty hall were lined with _loculi_ or niches, each as deep as the length of a man.

About the floor stood stone sarcophagi and beneath the long flags kings were sleeping, each with his abandoned name graven on the stones, washed year-long by the dark.

In the room's centre was a lofty cylindrical tomb, mounted by four steps, and this was the resting-place of King Abibaal, the younger son of King Abibaal of Tyre, and the brother to King Hiram, who ruled in Tyre when the Phoenicians who settled Yaque, or Arqua, first passed the Straits of Gibraltar and gained the open sea.

("Dear me," said Mrs.Hastings when they told her, "I was at Mount Vernon once, and the Washingtons' tombs there impressed me very deeply, but they were nothing to these in point of age, were they ?") Sunken in the wall was a tomb of white marble hewn in a five-faced pyramidion, where slept Queen Mitygen, who ruled in Yaque while Alexander was king of Persia.