“Well, a lady’s hank’cher was found in Marster’s room, and it did smell of chloryform.  Bedney picked it up, and we said nothing and laid low, and hid the thing; but that Godforsaken and predestinated sinner, Miss Angeline, kept sarching and eavesdrapping, and set the lie-yers on the scent, and they have ’strained Bedney on peril of jailing him, to perduce it.  When it got into their claws, and I thought it might belonk to you, my teeth chattered, and I felt like the back of my frock was a ice-warehouse.  Now, honey, can you testify before God and man, that hank’cher ain’t yourn?”

“I certainly can.  I had only three handkerchiefs with me when I left home, and I have them still.  Here is one, the other two lie yonder.  But that handkerchief is worth everything; because it must belong to the vile wretch who committed the crime, and it will help to prove my innocence.  Where is it?”

“The Grand Jury is setting on it.”

Here Dyce looked cautiously around, and tip-toed to the door; finding it ajar, closed it, then stole back.  Putting her lips close to Beryl’s ear, she whispered: 

“Did you lose a sleeve button?”

“No.  I did not wear any.”

“Thank God!  I feel like all the bricks in the court-house was lifted off my heart, and flung away.  I was in fear and trimbling about that button, ’cause I picked it up, just under the aidge of the rug, where ole Marster fell, when he got his death blow; and as sure as the coming of the Judgment Day, it was drapped by the pusson who killed him.  I was so afeared it might belonk to you, that I have been on the anxious seat ever since I found it; and I concluded the safest way was to bring it here to you.  I am scared to keep it at home, ’cause them yelping wolves as wears the sheepskins of Justice, are on my tracks.  I would never give it up, if I was chopped to mince meat; but Bedney ain’t got no more than enuff backbone for half of a man, and the lie-yers discomfrizzle him so, I could not trust him, when it comes to the scratch.  Now that button is worth a heap, and I am precious careful of it.  Look here.”

She took from her pocket two large pods of red pepper, which looked exactly alike, but the end of one had been cut out around the stem, then neatly fitted back, and held in place by some colorless cement.  Beckoning Beryl to follow, Dyce went closer to the window, and with the aid of her teeth drew out the stem.  Into her palm rolled a circular button of some opaque reddish-brown substance, resembling tortoise shell, and enamelled with gilt bunches of grapes, and inlaid leaves of mother-of-pearl.  Across the top, embossed in gilt letters ran the word “Ricordo.”

The old woman lifted her open palm, and as Beryl saw the button, a gasping, gurgling sound broke from her.  She snatched it, stared at it.  Then the Gorgon head slipped through her fingers, she threw herself against the window, shook the iron bar frantically; and one desperate cry seemed to tear its way through her clinched teeth, over her ashy lips: