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 actual value, though I knew it must be considerable--enough to make up to Nicholas Jelnik the losses he had sustained; enough to decide his fate--and mine. Even now he was packing to go; even now there were "For Sale" signs on the gray cottage. I ran into our living-room, snatched my sewing-bag from the sewing-stand, and dropped the heavy bag into it. That looked more commonplace. The clamor from the kitchen, incident upon Beautiful Dog's having taken refuge under Mary Magdalen's skirts, had died down. I knew that Beautiful Dog was licking his wounds after defeat, and the Black cats, sedate and mild-mannered, were licking their paws after victory. I determined that from that afternoon Beautiful Dog should become an honored and important institution in Hynds House. If I had to choose a new family escutcheon, I think I should insist upon having Beautiful Dog rampant upon it! When I went outside, the garden was a gray-green gloom of flying leaves and twisting tree-branches bending before the stiff northeast gale. It was wild weather--weather that sent the blood tingling through the veins and whipped red into one's cheeks. I got into Mr. Jelnik's grounds through the hedge behind the spring-house, and ran like a hare through his garden. I had to hammer upon his door before I could make Achmet hear me, so loud and surf-like was the noise of the wind in the trees.