I snatched up the brass-headed poker, the readiest thing to my hand. I merely wished to shoo off the Blacks with it. But as I rose from my chair with a _scat_! upon my lips, Beautiful Dog, seeing out of the tail of his eye a chance to escape, dashed headlong into me. He came with such force that I fell backward, and the poker flew out of my hand and came _crack_! upon the sacred tiles of Hynds House library. There was an ominous clatter, for no less than the Father of his Country himself had fallen out of his place. At the same instant Beautiful Dog gained the door, with both cats upon his hind quarters; with one prolonged yell of terror he made for safety and Mary Magdalen. I picked myself and the tile up. Thank Heaven, it wasn't broken. The blow had loosened the cement that held it in place, and where it had been was a small square hole. I looked at that hole doubtfully. There oughtn't to be any hole there at all. That was a curious way to fix tiles, such precious tiles as ours. I slipped my hand in and tentatively tested the black wall, and discovered that the other tiles, as might be expected, had been properly put in; that is, against a solid background. I put my hand farther into the aperture. It was larger than might be expected, and most cunningly contrived--a hollow space some ten inches in width, and possibly a foot deep. There was something in it. Now I am mortally afraid of rats and mice, and what I had touched had the sleazy feel of frayed silk. It might be a rat's nest! I took a sliver of lightwood from the fire, and with this examined the black interior, before I ventured my fingers again. It wasn't a rat's nest in the corner. It was a package. A package, or rather a sizable buckskin bag carefully tied together with thongs of the same material, and this wrapped in a piece of silk that tore and went to pieces even as I fingered it. Even then I didn't guess! I thought it was, perhaps, a Revolutionary hoard, maybe such another collection of old coins as we had found in the room without windows. The silk 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.