A big cat-owl perched on a pedestal in one corner, and a black tom-cat with intense green eyes, prowling about the room, gave to the scene a cabalistic and weird aspect. Here among these uncanny surroundings Dr. Hyder Ben Raaba isolated and busied himself with continuous vigilance for many months in order to achieve an undertaking that seemed miraculous and impossible.
Through the lapse of so many long and tedious months Dr. Hyder Ben Raaba had come to the completion of his assiduous labors,—labors which had almost exhausted his consummate skill in hypnotism, surgery and magic.
After a final but scrupulously careful examination of the patient, assuring himself that every muscle, nerve, gland and artery were in their proper places, he paused a moment before the prostrate body. It was a solemn and tragic moment. Signs of intense anxiety were visible upon his otherwise imperturbable visage, betraying the fact that he was in a crucial predicament.
What, if on awakening the patient, he found her a maniac irrevocably bereft of reason? What, if his re-incarnated subject should prove to be a hideous Frankenstein or a monstrosity devoid of finer senses? What, if she should prove to be a man with effeminate mind and manners?
Such and a thousand other similar fears and misgivings were flashing in that moment through his mind, but at last, confident of his ultimate success, and undaunted with apprehensions, he assumed a determined countenance and commenced to undo the hypnotic spell, in order to restore his subject to life and energy.
With eyes dilated, eyebrows knit, and arms stretched—holding in one hand a magic wand—this future Mephisto uttered some mysterious words in sepulchral intonations, snapped his fingers three times, and presto!
The spell was broken!
The full magical effect of his audacious undertaking was evident, for scarcely had the last syllable of those mysterious and incomprehensible words left his shriveled lips, when a sudden tremor shook the frame of Margaret and, with a subdued groan, indicative more of a sensation of bliss than of pain, she opened her eyes.