It wasn't a
rat's nest in the corner. It was a package. A package, or rather a
sizable buckskin bag carefully tied together with thongs of the same
material, and this wrapped in a piece of silk that tore and went to
pieces even as I fingered it.
Even then I didn't guess! I thought it was, perhaps, a Revolutionary
hoard, maybe such another collection of old coins as we had found in
the room without windows.
The silk dropped away like rotting leaves, but the buckskin bag was
stout and in perfect condition. So many and so hard were the knots
in the thongs that I had to use my penknife to cut them. And having
done so, I poured the contents of the bag on the library table.
It was, as I have said, a gray day. But the fires of a century's
sunsets flamed and flashed in that library! Ruby, sapphire, diamond,
emerald, pearl--how they glowed and glimmered! How they shone and
sparkled! For the moment there fell upon me that madness that jewels
bring upon women, a sort of wild delight in their hard, bright
beauty, an ecstasy, an intoxication. I poured them from one hand to
the other, I held the greatest to my cheek. The loveliness of them
went to my head.
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