Wasn't Nicholas Jelnik holding my
hand?
"Sophy," he said directly, "I have found the lost Key of Hynds
House." I looked at him dumbly. "I have reached that point where I
can tell you everything, little friend. Thank Heaven you have come!"
But of a sudden his-forehead was damp.
"You will remember," he said, after a moment's silence, and still
holding my hand--and I think that now he held it as he had once held
his mother's--"when I talked to you about my childhood and my
mother, I told you she had made me more of an American than an
Austrian. This old home-town of her people, this old house, the
mystery that blackened the Hynds name, were as real to me as the
scenes and people that actually surrounded me.
"When I was older, she turned over to me all her family papers, and
I sifted and assorted and reduced them to system and order. I found
among them Richard Hynds's own brief account of the affair, and
copies of letters to his father, but the bulk of the papers
consisted of such data as his son and namesake could gather. This
formed a copious mass, for he had set down every least circumstance
that he thought might have any bearing upon his father's case.
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