We went down dismal paths where the night wind sighed a miserere in the cedars, and things of the dark scurried away with furtive noises, or flapped ill-omened black wings overhead.  In a corner shaded by cypresses was the Hynds vault, a venerable affair with a slate roof.  Outside, in an inclosed space were some marble-covered graves and in a corner the simplest of all, one marked “R.H.”  Emily slept beside him, and their son beside her.  But on the farther side, next the wall, was room for one more sleeper.  And here, while Mr. Jelnik laid down his burden, Daoud and Achmet began to dig.

She lay there in the ghostly light and shade, so utterly cast aside and forgotten, so unloved, so unwept, so far removed from every human tie, that terror and pity filled my heart.  While Daoud and Achmet were making ready her bed, Nicholas Jelnik and I spread out the length of canvas, and wrapped her securely in the sheet and blanket.  We folded her claws upon the empty breast in which had once pulsed the passionate heart of Jessamine Hynds, and spread her hair over what had been her face.

Over in a sheltered spot behind the vault clambered a huge, overgrown, briery rose, and by some sweet impatience of nature one shoot had budded before its time.  I broke off the small, pale roses and placed them in her grasp.  But Mr. Jelnik took from his breast a pearl and silver crucifix, and this, reverently, he laid upon hers.

“It was my father’s grandmother’s.  She held it when she was dying.  She was an old saint.  It would please her to know that her crucifix should stay, one holy thing, with Jessamine Hynds.”

“’Verily, the gate of repentance is not nor shall be shut upon God’s creatures until the sun shall rise in the west,’” The Jinnee quoted his Prophet And he broke off two of his saphies, each with a holy verse written upon it, and dropped them upon her out of pure charity.

Daoud, who was intelligent and orthodox where Achmet was emotional and tender, was evidently not altogether sure of the wisdom of this proceeding; but he was not too orthodox to stand up arrow-straight, face the East, and pray for her.

So we wrapped her, brown silk dress and yellowed laces, and long black hair, in the strip of canvas, and gave her to the earth.  The last thing we saw, thank God! before the blanket fell over her for the last time, was the silver crucifix shining out of the roses in her hands.

Daoud and Achmet, their spades over their shoulders, left the cemetery, the latter the strangest, quaintest, most outlandish figure ever seen on a Carolina road.  Mr. Jelnik and I, with Boris close beside us, walked more slowly.

“Shall you go on with the search?” I ventured presently.

“But where shall I begin now?” he wondered.  “I have searched everything and every place searchable.”

“If Shooba hid them anywhere outside of that room, it must have been in some place that Jessamine herself knew and could get at if she wished; some particular place where nobody would dream of looking for them.  Women always choose hiding-places like that, and the notion would suit Shooba’s grim humor,” I said.