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The Jewel of Seven Stars
by Bram Stoker
To Eleanor and Constance Hoyt
Contents
I A Summons in the Night
II Strange Instructions
III The Watchers
IV The Second Attempt
V More Strange Instructions
VI Suspicions
VII The Traveller's Loss
VIII The Finding of the Lamps
IX The Need of Knowledge
X The Valley of the Sorcerer
XI A Queen's Tomb
XII The Magic Coffer
XIII Awaking From the Trance
XIV The Birth-Mark
XV The Purpose of Queen Tera
XVI The Cavern XVII Doubts and Fears
XVIII The Lesson of the "Ka"
XIX The Great Experiment
Chapter I
A Summons in the Night
It all seemed so real that I could hardly imagine that it had ever occurred before; and yet each episode came, not as a fresh step in the logic of things, but as something expected. It is in such a wise that memory plays its pranks for good or ill; for pleasure or pain; for weal or woe. It is thus that life is bittersweet, and that which has been done becomes eternal.
Again, the light skiff, ceasing to shoot through the lazy water as when the oars flashed and dripped, glided out of the fierce July sunlight into the cool shade of the great drooping willow branches--I standing up in the swaying boat, she sitting still and with deft fingers guarding herself from stray twigs or the freedom of the resilience of moving boughs. Again, the water looked golden-brown under the canopy of translucent green; and the grassy bank was of emerald hue. Again, we sat in the cool shade, with the myriad no