"Shooba hid them, between a night and a morning. Shooba brought her here, between a night and a morning. Where should the jewels be but here?" At his words the grim and mocking ghost of that terrible old African, who had been whipped for falling into trances, and who had so tragically revenged himself and his slighted mistress, seemed to rise behind all that remained of her. "Yes, he would put them where she could keep watch over them. Why should she come here, make her way through those dreadful passages, save for that? Think of her stealing out of her room in the dead of night, coming alive to what she knew was her tomb, shutting that door upon herself--" I looked at the tarnished cup, and hoped that the witch doctor's potion had given her a speedy sleep. I looked at the blackened candelabrum, and wondered whether that candle had gone out before she had, or whether her head had fallen upon her arm, and she had died wide-eyed in the black, black dark. The cold grue shook me again, and I beat my hands together for terror and pity. "Do not think of that!" said Mr. Jelnik. "Death rectifies human wrongs, and all of them have long, long since been healed of their hurts. Come, let us find the jewels. We are losing time." We opened the cabinets first. They held papers that had been precious in their day--old deeds, old charters and grants, with the king's seals and the signatures of the Lords Proprietors upon them; correspondence, a casual glance at which showed Revolutionary activities--a hanging matter once, but harmless enough now; a box of foreign coins, all gold; a charge, in medieval Latin, on fine parchment, which exquisitely illuminated initial letters; a plain silver chalice and a patten; some threadbare robes and regalia, and a gavel; a most carefully done chart of the Hynds family, ending, however, with Colonel James Hampden Hynds himself; two letters, and a miniature of Charles the First; letters signed, "Yours, B. Franklin," "Yours, John Hancock"; several from "Geo. Washington." The chest held two uniforms, one British, the other buff and blue; a pair of pistols, spurs, and a sword. The buff-and-blue uniform was worn and stained, with a burnt and ragged hole in the breast. It had belonged, said the slip pinned to it, to "Captain Lewis De Lacy Hynds, my youngest Brother, the youngest of our House, who Fell Gloriously at the Battle of Cowpens." And that was all. Although we examined every inch of that floor, every board of the walls, and made the most scrupulously careful search of the cabinets and the chest. I even dared pass my hands over Jessamine herself. Shooba the witch doctor had done the unexpected. Wherever he might have hidden them between a night and a morning, he had not hidden the Hynds jewels in the secret room of Hynds House. And she who alone could have solved the mystery and told us the truth, lay there with a lipless mouth. CHAPTER XVII ON THE KNEES OF THE GODS