Now, although we had not found the jewels, we had found Jessamine Hynds, and there remained to be done a thing that called for what strength of will and courage we possessed.  And we had need to make haste.  Already more time had been consumed than we bargained for.

Mr. Jelnik fetched a deep breath, and went over to the Thing in the chair.  There was in his manner neither repugnance nor horror, nothing but an almost divine compassion.  Never, never, had I respected the courage, the honor, the mercy of man so greatly as I did then.

It was a ghastly task; I do not like to remember it.  In the hot, dry air of the room without windows she had become, not a bleached skeleton, but a shriveled, fleshless, blackened mummy.  The hair still clung tightly to the skull, the discolored skin was stretched over the bony contour of the face; the lips had shriveled away from the teeth, which showed in a sort of jeering grin.  And—­well, we had to tie her hair, like a rope, around her chest and arms; and I tore the ruffles off my petticoat, to tie her skirts at the knees and ankles.

The brown frock was low-necked and short-sleeved, too.  And the picture of her, down-stairs, showed her with so red a lip, so round an arm, so soft, so white a bosom!

Thou might’st think thou hadst drunk the water of Paradise who had tasted the nectar of her lip....  The ends of her ringlets fell into the hand like as the sleeve of the generous in the hand of the needy.

Oh, Jessamine!

She had been so splendidly tall a woman, that as he held her grisly head upon his shoulder the little shoes that rattled upon her shriveled feet were well below his knees.  One great rope of her blue-black hair escaped and fell down the back of his white coat, and as he moved it moved, too, with a lazy and languid coquettishness horribly travesting youth and beauty.  It was such wonderful hair!  Small wonder young Richard had praised its dark splendor, and kissed its shining folds to his undoing!

“Jessamine,” Nicholas Jelnik said as he bent over her, “you shall have your chance to rest.  You shall sleep under the open sky.  Nature shall have you, Jessamine, and make you over into something of loveliness and of peace.”

“Because she loved much, much shall be forgiven her,” I whispered.  Ah!  At the last, who but Him of Galilee shall speak for us?

Never, until I shall be what she was then, shall I be able to forget that return journey.  Mr. Jelnik walked ahead, holding her on one arm, and carrying the flash-light with his free hand.  I followed with a candle that burned with a low and reddish glare and gave off a heavy, waxy odor in the still air.  Whenever the faintest draft lifted the dull flame, we two living creatures seemed to recede into darkness, while the light sought her out and stayed upon her.  The motion of his body shook her lightly, and she gave forth a dry and stealthy rattling, an uneasy