rustling.  One hand hung down, with a loose, loose bracelet jingling on the brittle brown wrist.  And her poor little feet with the rotting shoes upon them moved delicately, as if they trod the impalpable air.  Once her head struck, with a hollow thud, as we turned a corner.  It was almost more than flesh and blood could bear,—­like things you were afraid of when you were a child in the dark—­the candles melting audibly, and walls, walls, pressing us in.

I think it took us years to reach the room where Achmet waited.  At sight of what the master bore, The Jinnee started up and called upon God the Lord Paramount, Help of the Faithful.  Then, like the fine old fighter he was, he squared his shoulders, folded his arms, and waited orders.  Boris, with a deep-throated, smothered growl of fear and protest, bared his teeth and sidled against him, bristling and trembling.

We consulted briefly.  Mr. Jelnik was for leaving her there in the cellar room, until a fitter opportunity offered to give her sepulture.  But to this I vehemently objected.  I could not have stayed another hour in that house while I knew she was in it.  I wanted Jessamine Hynds consigned to the grave from which she had been too long kept.  I wanted her to sleep in the brown bosom of the earth, with the impartial grass to cover her, and roses to blow over her by and by, when summer should have come back to South Carolina.

Achmet led the way, and presently we were in the spring-house.  When I am feverish I dream of that last climb up the spidery stair, with Jessamine’s jaws widened into a soundless laugh, and The Jinnee’s light playing at hide-and-seek upon her.

I knelt down and plunged my face into the cold spring-water, and drank and drank.  How good it was!  And how grateful to my lungs was the outside air, so sweet, so fresh, so clean!  I loved the friendly trees waving in the good wind, I blessed the friendly stars.

We stopped at Mr. Jelnik’s house, and the man Daoud appeared in answer to a low-voiced summons and fetched me a most beautiful shawl, which I found extremely comfortable.  A stately and stoical personage was Daoud, unlike shy black Achmet, who hid himself from observation so thoroughly that people in Hyndsville were not aware of his existence.  I sat on the steps while for Jessamine Hynds was fetched a length of canvas, a linen sheet, and a gray army blanket.  Achmet appeared with spades.  And so we set out.

The old cemetery in Hyndsville, unlike the newer one in which folks take a sort of ghastly pride, one lot differing from another lot in glory, is an unpretentious place, enclosed by crumbling walls, the iron gates of which have rusted ajar.  It is a grassy, bird-haunted, tree-shaded spot, with some dozen or so old family vaults, some modest monuments that bear stately names, some raised marble slabs supported on carved and slender legs, like Death’s own little card-tables, some stones let flat into the earth, with names and dates long since erased by rain and wind and fallen leaf.  Nobody comes here any more.  Sophronisba Scarlett was the first and last to be interred in the old cemetery within the memory of the present generation.