his worshipin's, an' he comes along an' says, 'Thankee, Mammy, I reckon that'll have to last me until to-morrow,' an' then I goes back an' locks the do'. I's mighty keerful to lock do's. I ain't minded to have no 'quisitive nigger ramshakin' 'roun'."
But my uncle stopped her and sent her to Betty as evidence in the flesh that she had come acquit of Randolph's inquisition. And the two men fell into a talk upon other matters.
But I no longer listened. I sat within my bush and studied the impassive face of my Uncle Abner, and tried to join these contradictory incidents into something that I could understand. Slowly the thing came to me! But I did not push on into the inevitable conclusion. Its consequences were too appalling. I saw it and let it lie.
Somebody had pried the emeralds out of that cross,—somebody having access to the room. And that person was not Mammy Liza! Abner knew that. . . . And he deliberately falsified the evidence. To acquit Mammy Liza? Something more than that, I thought. She was in no danger; even Randolph behind his judicial attitudes, had never entertained the idea for a moment. Then, this thing meant that my uncle had deliberately screened the real criminal. But why? Abner was no respecter of men. He stood for justice—clean and ruthless justice, tempered by no distinctions. Why, then, indeed?
And then I had an inspiration. Abner was think-
186
