The loss of the jewels affected Keturah Hand strangely. At first it made her ill, but soon she was not only well, but better than she had been for a long time. She declared herself actually relieved, in a sense, to be rid of the stones. They had been a constant worriment for years. Now she did not have the care and anxiety of them—and she knew they were in safe hands.

“Any one who steals them is going to take pretty good[165] care of them,” she declared. “And I think I know who stole them, and why.”

“Was it the ghost of one of Kidd’s pirates?” asked Mermaid, upon whom the theft of the jewels had seemed to have a more persistently depressing effect than it had had upon her aunt.

“He may have been one of Kidd’s pirates in a previous incarnation, and he may have been Kidd himself in an earlier life,” responded Keturah. “At present he’s a retired sea captain whose story wouldn’t look pretty in print, I suspect. Not that it will ever get printed,” she added. “He took them because——” She broke off. “I don’t know as I’m called upon to air my guesses,” she explained. “I’m not a detective in a detective story and I’ll not do any deducing out loud.”

Both Ho Ha and John Smiley were much upset by the disappearance of the stones, though both felt called upon to remonstrate with Keturah when she said, quite calmly, that Captain Vanton had got what he was after.

“If there’s the slightest shred of evidence that Captain Vanton took them, Hosea and I can handle him,” her brother told her. “You won’t let the theft be known, and you won’t hire a detective. You won’t tell us anything that points to Vanton.”

“Because I can’t,” cut in Keturah. “I’m not like a good many women. I don’t mistake my intuitions for evidence. I just feel that he has them—and I don’t much care if he has. I also feel that he won’t break them[166] up and sell them, and that eventually they will get where they belong, as nearly as possible. Jewels aren’t like any other kind of property, and everybody who has much to do with them knows it. I’m not superstitious, but you don’t have to be superstitious to believe that a sort of curse attends the possession of most really valuable gems whenever they’re not in the right hands. They don’t rightly belong to me, never did. As I say, it’s no use to hand down jewels like other property. My aunt, to whom they belonged as rightfully as any one else, had no more sense than to leave them to me along with her land and furniture. I’ve always known............