"I did chap them atween my hands, as children chap
chaff. They did glow like the Devill his rainbow," Jessamine had
said. And remembering her, the delight vanished.
With stunning force the meaning of this discovery came home to me. I
had found the unfindable! This, this was where Shooba had hidden
them between a night and a morning, Shooba the "skilfullest workman
on Hynds place." One fancied him here, in the dead of night, while
all Hynds House slept a drugged sleep. It would suit his sardonic
humor, his impish malice, to hide them where the Hyndses must pass
them daily; and, himself a slave, to hide them behind the pictured
semblance of Washington. The grim irony of the thing! And not the
cunning of man, but the antics of a cur, a yellow nigger dog, had
outwitted the cunning of the old witch doctor! Beautiful Dog had
brought to light that which Jessamine had died alone in the dark
rather than reveal.
There was one thing more in the buckskin bag, wrapped separately.
When I got this separate package open, I found three frayed, black
feathers bound together with a strand of black hair, a piece of
yellow wax with two slivers of what I think was bone thrust through
it crosswise, and a small semblance of a snake, rudely carved out of
wood.
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