dropped away like rotting leaves, but the buckskin bag was
stout and in perfect condition. So many and so hard were the knots
in the thongs that I had to use my penknife to cut them. And having
done so, I poured the contents of the bag on the library table.

It was, as I have said, a gray day. But the fires of a century's
sunsets flamed and flashed in that library! Ruby, sapphire, diamond,
emerald, pearl--how they glowed and glimmered! How they shone and
sparkled! For the moment there fell upon me that madness that jewels
bring upon women, a sort of wild delight in their hard, bright
beauty, an ecstasy, an intoxication. I poured them from one hand to
the other, I held the greatest to my cheek. The loveliness of them
went to my head. "I did chap them atween my hands, as children chap
chaff. They did glow like the Devill his rainbow," Jessamine had
said. And remembering her, the delight vanished.

With stunning force the meaning of this discovery came home to me. I
had found the unfindable! This, this was where Shooba had hidden
them between a night and a morning, Shooba the "skilfullest workman
on Hynds place." One fancied him here, in the dead of night, while
all Hynds House slept a drugged sleep. It would suit his sardonic
humor, his impish malice, to hide them where the Hyndses must pass
them daily; and, himself a slave, to hide them behind the pictured
semblance of Washington. The grim irony of the thing! And not the
cunning of man, but the antics of a cur, a yellow nigger dog, had
outwitted the cunning of the old witch doctor! Beautiful Dog had
brought to light that which Jessamine had died alone in the dark
rather than reveal.

There was one thing more in the buckskin bag, wrapped separately.
When I got this separate package open, I found three frayed, black
feathers bound together with a strand of black hair, a piece of
yellow wax with two slivers of what I think was bone thrust through
it crosswise, and a small semblance of a snake, rudely carved out of
wood. There was, too, some dust, or powder, that must once have
been leaves, or perhaps roots. These unchancy things and the bag
that held them I dropped into the fire, breathing a sigh of relief
to see its red tooth seize upon them. The wax made a hissing noise,
and the dust of leaves, or whatever it was, burned with a bright,
fierce flame.

Then with feverish haste I got the Hynds jewels back into the
buckskin bag. I hadn't the faintest notion as to their