After a few seconds of silence Mr.
Trelawny said to Mr. Corbeck:

“You have told Doctor Winchester all up to the present, as we arranged?”

“Yes,” he answered; so Mr. Trelawny said:

“And I have told Margaret, so we all know!”  Then, turning to the
Doctor, he asked:

“And am I to take it that you, knowing all as we know it who have
followed the matter for years, wish to share in the experiment which we
hope to make?”  His answer was direct and uncompromising:

“Certainly! Why, when this matter was fresh to me, I offered to go on
with it to the end. Now that it is of such strange interest, I would
not miss it for anything which you could name. Be quite easy in your
mind, Mr. Trelawny. I am a scientist and an investigator of phenomena. I have no one belonging to me or dependent on me. I am quite alone,
and free to do what I like with my own—including my life!”  Mr.
Trelawny bowed gravely, and turning to Mr. Corbeck said:

“I have known your ideas for many years past, old friend; so I need ask
you nothing. As to Margaret and Malcolm Ross, they have already told me
their wishes in no uncertain way.”  He paused a few seconds, as though
to put his thoughts or his words in order; then he began to explain his
views and intentions. He spoke very carefully, seeming always to bear
in mind that some of us who listened were ignorant of the very root and
nature of some things touched upon, and explaining them to us as he
went on:

“The experiment which is before us is to try whether or no there is any
force, any reality, in the old Magic. There could not possibly be more
favourable conditions for the test; and it is my own desire to do all
that is possible to make the original design effective. That there is
some such existing power I firmly believe. It might not be possible to
create, or arrange, or organise such a power in our own time; but I
take it that if in Old Time such a power existed, it may have some
exceptional survival. After all, the Bible is not a myth; and we read
there that the sun stood still at a man’s command, and that an ass—not
a human one—spoke. And if the Witch at Endor could call up to Saul
the spirit of Samuel, why may not there have been others with equal
powers; and why may not one among them survive? Indeed, we are told in
the Book of Samuel that the Witch of Endor was only one of many, and
her being consulted by Saul was a matter of chance. He only sought one
among the many whom he had driven out of Israel; ‘all those that had
Familiar Spirits, and the Wizards.’  This Egyptian Queen, Tera, who
reigned nearly two thousand years before Saul, had a Familiar, and was
a Wizard too. See how the priests of her time, and those after it
tried to wipe out her name from the face of the earth, and put a curse
over the very door of her tomb so that none might ever discover the
lost name. Ay, and they succeeded so well that even Manetho, the
historian of the Egyptian Kings, writing in the tenth century before
Christ, with all the lore of the priesthood for forty centuries behind
him, and with possibility of access to every existing record, could not
even find her name. Did it strike any of you, in thinking of the late
events, who or what her Familiar was?”  There was an interruption, for
Doctor Winchester struck one hand loudly on the other as he ejaculated:

“The cat! The mummy cat! I knew it!”  Mr. Trelawny smiled over at him. “You are right! There is every indication that the Familiar of the
Wizard Queen was that cat which was mummied when she was, and was not
only placed in her tomb, but was laid in the sarcophagus with her. That was what bit into my wrist, what cut me with sharp claws.”  He
paused. Margaret’s comment was a purely girlish one:

“Then my poor Silvio is acquitted! I am glad!”  Her father stroked her
hair and went on:

“This woman seems to have had an extraordinary foresight. Foresight
far, far beyond her age and the philosophy of her time. She seems to
have seen through the weakness of her own religion, and even prepared
for emergence into a different world. All her aspirations were for the
North, the point of the compass whence blew the cool invigorating
breezes that make life a joy. From the first, her eyes seem to have
been attracted to the seven stars of the Plough from the fact, as
recorded in the hieroglyphics in her tomb, that at her birth a great
aerolite fell, from whose heart was finally extracted that Jewel of
Seven Stars which she regarded as the talisman of her life. It seems
to have so far ruled her destiny that all her thought and care circled
round it. The Magic Coffer, so wondrously wrought with seven sides, we
learn from the same source, came from the aerolite. Seven was to her a
magic number; and no wonder. With seven fingers on one hand, and seven
toes on one foot. With a talisman of a rare ruby with seven stars in
the same position as in that constellation which ruled her birth, each
star of the seven having seven points—in itself a geological
wonder—it would have been odd if she had not been attracted by it. Again, she was born, we learn in the Stele of her tomb, in the seventh
month of the year—the month beginning with the Inundation of the Nile. Of which month the presiding Goddess was Hathor, the Goddess of her own
house, of the Antefs of the Theban line—the Goddess who in various
forms symbolises beauty, and pleasure, and resurrection. Again, in
this seventh month—which, by later Egyptian astronomy began on October
28th, and ran to the 27th of our November—on the seventh day the
Pointer of the Plough just rises above the horizon of the sky at Thebes. “In a marvellously strange way, therefore, are grouped into this
woman’s life these various things. The number seven; the Pole Star,
with the constellation of seven stars; the God of the month, Hathor,
who was her own particular God, the God of her family, the Antefs of
the Theban Dynasty, whose Kings’ symbol it was, and whose seven forms
ruled love and the delights of life and resurrection. If ever there
was ground for magic; for the power of symbolism carried into mystic
use; for a belief in finites spirits in an age which knew not the
Living God, it is here. “Remember, too, that this woman was skilled in all the science of her
time. Her wise and cautious father took care of that, knowing that by
her own wisdom she must ultimately combat the intrigues of the
Hierarchy. Bear in mind that in old Egypt the science of Astronomy
began and was developed to an extraordinary height; and that Astrology
followed Astronomy in its progress. And it is possible that in the
later developments of science with regard to light rays, we may yet
find that Astrology is on a scientific basis. Our next wave of
scientific thought may deal with this. I shall have something special
to call your minds to on this point presently. Bear in mind also that
the Egyptians knew sciences, of which today, despite all our
advantages, we are profoundly ignorant.