I was grateful that The Author’s mind was too taken up with Hynds House history to focus itself upon us.  The Author spent his spare hours rummaging through such dusty and musty records as might throw some light upon the Hyndses.  In the old office were many faded plantation and household books, and he was able to glean enough from these to confirm the methodical carefulness of Freeman Hynds.  There were, too, dry receipts for “monies Paid by Mr. Rich.  Hynds” for some old slave; or a brief notice that “By Orders Mr. Richd.  Hynds, no Women shall be Whipt”; or “Bought by Mr. R. Hynds & Charg’d to his Acct., one Crippl’d Black Childe namd Scipio from Vanham’s Sale, & Given to Sukey his Mother.”  Another time it would be a list of Christmas gifts:  “One Colour’d Head Kerchief for Nancy.  One Flute for Blind Sam.  One Shoulder Cape for Kitty my Nurse.  One Horn-handl’d Knife for Agrippa.  One Pckt.  Tobacco & a Jorum of Rum for Shooba.”

Over against these items were others:  “By Orders Mr. Freeman Hynds, Juba to Receive Twenty light Lashes for Malingering; Black Tom to be Shipt to River Bottom Plantation for the Chastning of his Spiritt; Bread & Water & Irons 3 Dayes & Nights for Shooba for Frighting of his Fellowes & other Evil Behaviour.”

This was interesting enough, but not conclusive.  All that The Author could find only deepened his uncertainty, and this made him abominably cross, an ill temper increased by the presence of Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, who came and went, unruffled, aloof, with inscrutable eyes and a gently mocking smile.

The Harrison-Gores came shortly after Morenas left.  The Englishman was a pink-faced old gentleman in a shabby Norfolk suit and with the very thinnest legs on record—­“mocking-bird legs,” Fernolia called them.  His daughter was a gray-eyed Minerva with the skin of a baby and the walk of a Highland piper.  They found Carolina people charming, and they secured some valuable data for their book, “The Beginnings of American History.”  Everything in Hynds House pleased them, even The Author.

Other people who do not enter into this story came and went during that winter.  But they were merely millionaires—­people who motored around the lovely country, ate Mary Magdalen’s hot biscuit and fried chicken, slept in our four-posters, paid their stiff bills thankfully, and went about their business as good millionaires should, and generally do.  Only one out of them all was disagreeable; he wanted to buy Hynds House out of hand for a proposed club of which he was to be founder and president.

“It’d be just what the bunch would like,” he told me.  “All we’d have to do would be to paint these wooden walls a nice cheerful light color, change one room into a smoker, another into a billiard-room, and a third into a grill, add some gun-racks and leather wing-chairs, and we’d be right up to the minute in club-houses!”