You shall judge for yourself
whether it deserved any. Freeman Hynds, riding about the plantation
after his habit, was thrown from his horse and died from the
injuries sustained. He recovered consciousness for a few minutes
before he died; some said he never really regained it. Be that as it
may, the dying man cried out, in a voice of great anguish and
affliction: '_Richard! Brother Richard! The jewels--the jewels!_' He
struggled to say more, and failed; looked into the concerned faces
around him, with the awful look of the soul about to depart;
struggled to raise himself; and fell back upon his pillow a corpse.
"Some--they were in the majority--said, sensibly enough, that the
pain and disgrace of his brother's downfall had haunted the poor
gentleman's death-bed, and occasioned that last sad cry. Some few
said he had wished to confess a thing heavy upon his conscience, who
had taken his brother's place as Jacob took Esau's. Richard's wife,
of course, was of these latter. She went to her grave a passionate
believer in the innocence of her husband, whom she averred to have
been a deeply wronged and cruelly used man; and, for heaven's sake,
who do you suppose she claimed had wronged him? Freeman! She
couldn't prove anything; she hadn't the ghost of a clue to hang the
ghost of an accusation upon; yet, womanlike, she clung to her
notion, and she taught it to her son as one teaches a holy creed.
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