liar, 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,