_?"

"Mr. Jelnik's mother was a Miss Hynds. She met and married your
doctor abroad."

That sixth sense possessed by him to an unusual degree, warned him
that he was on the trail of Copy.

"May I ask questions?" he demanded.

"Of course."

"You inherited this property from an old aunt, I believe?"

"She wasn't my aunt, really. She married my mother's uncle, Johnny
Scarlett."

"I see. And Jelnik's mother was a Miss Hynds. How long has he been
here?"

"For some time before we came."

"Near neighbor of yours?"

"Yes," Alicia put in; "and Doctor Richard Geddes is our neighbor on
the other side. His grandmother was a Miss Hynds."

"Pardon a writer-man's curiosity," begged The Author, smiling. "But
this house is unusual, very unusual. While I am here I shall look up
its history. It should make good copy."

Having a pretty shrewd idea of The Author's powers of finding out
what he wanted to find out, we thought it better that he should hear
that history, as we knew it. If the mystery had ever been solved,
the tragedy of Hynds House would have had but passing interest for
The Author. But the undiscovered piqued and puzzled him and aroused
his combative egotism.

From the pictured face of Freeman--dark, stern, uncommunicative--he
trotted back to the drawing room to look again at the boyish face of
little Richard leaning against his pretty mother's knees; at the
haughty, handsome face of James Hampden; and at beautiful dark
Jessamine, who had a long black curl straying across the shoulder of
a blue frock, and a curled red lip, and a breast of snow.

"Freeman was not a crook; his face is hard, stern, bigoted,
secretive, but honest. Yet if he didn't do it himself what was he
trying to tell when death cut off his wind? If he did it, where did
he hide the plunder? Here in this house? His family must have known
every nook and cranny as well as he did himself, and he could be
sure they'd pull it to pieces in the search that would ensue.

"If Richard were the thief, to whom did he give the loot? If the
gems had been put upon the market, some trace of them must have been
discovered. Remains: Who got them? Where did they go?"

"That's what the unhappy people in this house asked a century ago,
and there was no answer," I remarked, soberly.

"And that poor woman Jessamine went mad trying to solve it!" he
said, looking at her with commiseration. And after a pause: "And so
the lady who left her husband's grandniece the h