it. They planned and built wonderfully
well, those old master work-men. They meant that secret room to be
the strong-box, the inviolate hiding-place which should keep what
might be entrusted to it. It was, as it were, the heart of Hynds
House.

"Remember that Richard's father died of a stroke of apoplexy, and
without speaking. Thus Freeman would know no more than Richard did.
There was but one person alive who knew, and that was--"

"A slave?" I whispered, remembering Freeman's diary.

"A slave, an unlettered slave. How he discovered it I do not know.
But he did discover it. He knew, and the Hyndses did not. In regard
to this same slave, a curious item was set down by Richard's son:

"'This day Black Shooba's son told me of a heathen song Shooba made
before he died and swore him to forget not. 'Tis a strange chaunt:

"I, Shooba, the Snake Soul, make me a Song.
In the night I sing it for my Snake.
My Snake showed me a Secret Thing.
Two Eyes and Two Eyes looked upon One Eye.
One Eye is open and sees, and sees not.
This my Snake showed me, in the Dark.
But the Strong Ones, the White Ones,
They have no Snake. Ho! Never shall they see it!"'

"Sounds like a stark raving, doesn't it? One can fancy the doctor
feeling a bit ashamed of himself when he wrote it down.

"I rather fancied it raving, myself, until one day I came across--"
here he paused, and looked at me intently--"a yellowed slip of paper
between the pages of an old diary that had been accidentally
discovered. I knew then that there was really something to be
discovered, and that I had not been a visionary sentimentalist when
I yielded to my mother's last expressed wish that I should come
here and search.

"I suppose," he went on dreamily, "that it was in my blood, the
desire to come here to Hyndsville, like a homing bird. But when my
mother died, the ties that bound me to her country seemed to be in a
measure loosened. Then, too, the _Wanderlust_ had me in its grip. I
put aside the profession my father had bred me to, left my affairs
in what I thought capable hands, and indulged my desire to wander up
and down the earth and sail the seven seas. It was upon one of these
prowls that I came upon my old Achmet here, and induced a master who
didn't love him to part with him." And he looked at the old man with
whimsical tenderness.

"I am your slave," spoke up The Jinnee,