Allah enlighten her!"

"Sit down here beside me for a few minutes, Sophy, and rest," said
Mr. Jelnik, seating himself. "And do not look so pale, my little
comrade."

"I thought--that you might be ill," I faltered. "I thought--that you
needed me."

"I am not ill, but I do need you," he said quickly, and took my hand
in a firm clasp. The touch of that hand brought me out of my
trance-like state. It was all right, and the most natural thing in
the world, that I should be sitting in this windowless vault, with
two candles and a shadowy lantern burning dimly in the still air, an
old black Jinnee squatting on his heels watching me, a great
wolf-hound stretched beside him. Wasn't Nicholas Jelnik holding my
hand?

"Sophy," he said directly, "I have found the lost Key of Hynds
House." I looked at him dumbly. "I have reached that point where I
can tell you everything, little friend. Thank Heaven you have come!"
But of a sudden his-forehead was damp.

"You will remember," he said, after a moment's silence, and still
holding my hand--and I think that now he held it as he had once held
his mother's--"when I talked to you about my childhood and my
mother, I told you she had made me more of an American than an
Austrian. This old home-town of her people, this old house, the
mystery that blackened the Hynds name, were as real to me as the
scenes and people that actually surrounded me.

"When I was older, she turned over to me all her family papers, and
I sifted and assorted and reduced them to system and order. I found
among them Richard Hynds's own brief account of the affair, and
copies of letters to his father, but the bulk of the papers
consisted of such data as his son and namesake could gather. This
formed a copious mass, for he had set down every least circumstance
that he thought might have any bearing upon his father's case. These
papers, guarded so jealously, bequeathed to his successors the
sacred task of righting Richard Hynds.

"In Richard's short statement, left for his little son, he, as
rightful heir of Hynds House, mentions the secret passages and tells
how they may be entered. He had been taught that much, himself, on
reaching his majority. But there was one vital secret that hadn't
been revealed to Richard, for not until the head of Hynds House knew
he was about to die did he give to his successor the Key to the
hidden room; the room concealed so cunningly that without the Key
one could never hope to find