Recent experience alone
prevented Alroy from sinking before the spectre of Jabaster. Such was
the single form. It advanced, bearing the sceptre. It advanced, it knelt
before the throne, it offered the sceptre to the crowned and solemn
vision. And the form of Solomon extended its arm, and took the sceptre,
and instantly the mighty assembly vanished!
Alroy advanced immediately into the chamber, but all was dark and
silent. A trumpet sounded. He recognised the note of his own soldiery.
He groped his way to a curtain, and, pulling it aside, beheld the first
streak of dawn.
Once more upon his charger, once more surrounded by his legions, once
more his senses dazzled and inflamed by the waving banners and the
inspiring trumpets, once more conscious of the power still at his
command, and the mighty stake for which he was about to play, Alroy in a
great degree recovered his usual spirit and self-possession. His energy
returned with his excited pulse, and the vastness of the impending
danger seemed only to stimulate the fertility of his genius.
He pushed on by forced marches towards Media, at the head of fifty
thousand men. At the end of the second day's march, fresh couriers
arrived from Abner, informing him that, unable to resist the valiant
and almost innumerable host of the King of Karasme, he had entirely
evacuated Persia, and had concentrated his forces in Louristan.
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