By the
fever-fires in my brain I seemed to see the very faces of the
corpses.
'Who am I?' I said to myself, as I thought, but evidently aloud;
'I am the Fool of Superstition. I am Fenella Stanley's Fool, and
Sinfi Lovell's Fool, and Philip Aylwin's Fool, who went and averted
a curse from one of the heads resting down here, averted a curse by
burying a jewel in a dead man's tomb.'
'Not in this cemetery, so none o' your gammon,' said the
gravedigger, who had overheard me. 'The on'y people as is fools
enough to bury jewels with dead bodies is the Gypsies, and _they_
take precious good care, as I know, to keep it mum _where_ they bury
'em. There's bin as much diggin' for them thousand guineas as was
buried with Jerry Chilcott in Foxleigh Parish, where I was born, as
would more nor pay for emptying a gold mine; but I never heard o'
Christian folk a-buryin' jewels. But who are you?'
I felt a hand upon my shoulder, and looking round, I found Sinfi by
my side.
'Does he belong to you, my gal?'
'Yis,' said Sinfi, with a strange, deep ring in her rich contralto
voice.
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