The Forbidden Door
and ran down the trench to where the workmen, chattering shrilly, were gathered around a mass of débris. It was not the first find of the expedition, but each fresh discovery sent the same tingle of excitement through the entire outfit. For there is nothing more stirring than to stand at the threshold of a long-dead world, on the verge of entering, knowing that the next blow of the pick, the next step forward, may reveal either lost secrets of dead peoples which will shed fresh light through the grey mists of ages—or nothing; may turn a new page in the sealed Book of the Things that Were, or disclose a blank. Even the basket-men swarmed to look, craning over the shoulders of the pickmen.
The trench was close on a hundred and
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