“Sophy,” he said directly, “I have found the lost Key of Hynds House.”  I looked at him dumbly.  “I have reached that point where I can tell you everything, little friend.  Thank Heaven you have come!” But of a sudden his-forehead was damp.

“You will remember,” he said, after a moment’s silence, and still holding my hand—­and I think that now he held it as he had once held his mother’s—­“when I talked to you about my childhood and my mother, I told you she had made me more of an American than an Austrian.  This old home-town of her people, this old house, the mystery that blackened the Hynds name, were as real to me as the scenes and people that actually surrounded me.

“When I was older, she turned over to me all her family papers, and I sifted and assorted and reduced them to system and order.  I found among them Richard Hynds’s own brief account of the affair, and copies of letters to his father, but the bulk of the papers consisted of such data as his son and namesake could gather.  This formed a copious mass, for he had set down every least circumstance that he thought might have any bearing upon his father’s case.  These papers, guarded so jealously, bequeathed to his successors the sacred task of righting Richard Hynds.

“In Richard’s short statement, left for his little son, he, as rightful heir of Hynds House, mentions the secret passages and tells how they may be entered.  He had been taught that much, himself, on reaching his majority.  But there was one vital secret that hadn’t been revealed to Richard, for not until the head of Hynds House knew he was about to die did he give to his successor the Key to the hidden room; the room concealed so cunningly that without the Key one could never hope to find 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!"’