A great uneasiness, even sadness now came over both of us.
     I have for many years had the bad habit of talking to myself or, what was considered worse, talking out my own thoughts aloud even in front of company.
     Dr. Noddy's having walked off with the feather Clyde and I had found in the jewel room was the source of our discontent.
     Thinking Clyde was dozing after sipping his wine, I found myself speaking aloud of my discomfiture and even alarm.
     "He is making us feel like the accused," I said, and then I added more similar thoughts.
     To my surprise I heard Clyde answering me, which was very unlike him.
     I felt we were in some ancient Italian opera singing back to one another, echoing one another's thoughts.
     "I didn't like the way he stared at us, holding the feather like it was proof of something," Clyde started up.
     "Exactly, godson. The very words I was trying to express when I thought you were dozing."
     "What does he aim to do with it?" Clyde raised his voice.
     "And what does he mean to do with it regarding us?" I took up his point. "He acts more like a policeman or detective than a doctor where the feather is concerned."
     "You take the words right out of my mouth," he spoke loudly.
     "Oh Clyde, Clyde whatever would I do without you?"
     "You'd do all right, Delia. You know you would." He picked up the empty wineglass and to my considerable shock he spat into it. "It's me," he said, "who wouldn't know where to turn if I wasn't here with you. I would be the one who didn't know up from down."
     "With all your talents, dear boy!" I cried, almost angry he had spoken so against himself. "Never!"
     "Never what, Delia? You know how I failed in school and disappointed Uncle Enos."
     "Failed him, failed school! Poppycock! Then it was their fault if you did. Uncle Enos adored you. You could do no wrong in his eyes. Oh, if only he were here to tell us about the feather. And about that wretched doctor. He would set us straight."
     "Now, now," Clyde said, rising, and he came over to my chair and all at once he knelt down and looked up into my troubled face.
     "Does old Dr. Noddy know your jewels have disappeared?"
     "I think so."
     "You think so?"
     "I'm sure I told him when I was having an attack of the neuralgia that they had all vanished."
     "And what did he say then?"
     "It's not so much what he said, he never says much, it was the way he stared at me when I said, 'All my jewels are gone.'"
     "Stared how?"
     "As he stared at us today when he held the feather. Stared as if I had done something wrong. As if I had done away with my own jewels."
     "Oh, he couldn't think that against you, Delia."
     "He thinks against everybody. He feels anybody who needs him and his services has something to be held against them. If we are ailing, then we are to blame. That's what I gather from old Dr. Noddy."
     "And now, Delia," he said, rising and standing behind my chair so that I could feel his honey-sweet breath against my hair. "And now," he went on, "we have to wait like the accused in a court of law."
     "Exactly, exactly. And, oh my stars, what on earth can he do with a feather, anyhow? Make it confess?"
     We both laughed.
     "I can't go to bed on all of this we're facing now," I told Clyde. "I am going to the kitchen and make us some coffee."
     "Let me make it, Delia."
     "No, no, I am the cook here and the coffee maker. You make it too weak. I must stay alert. And we must put Doc Noddy on trial here tonight before he can put us in the witness box and call us liars to our face."
     With that I went into the kitchen and took down the jar of Arabian coffee, got out the old coffee grinder, and let Clyde (who had followed me without being asked), let him grind the beans.
     "What a heavenly aroma," I said when our chore was finished. "And I made it with well water, of course, for as old Doc Noddy says you must drink well water religiously, dear lad."
     We felt less threatened, less on trial at any rate, drinking the Arabian brew.
     Then a great cloud of worry and fear descended upon me. I did all I could to conceal my feelings from my godson.
     The source of my fear was, of course, who else but Doctor Noddy. I recalled in the long heavy burden of memory that Dr. Noddy was nearly as old as I, at least he must have been far into his eighties at this time. But it was not his age which weighed upon me. It was the memory of Dr. Noddy having been accused a half century or more ago of practicing hypnotism on his patients. And also being suspected of giving his older patients a good deal of opium. But the opium did not concern me now, has indeed never worried me. He only gave it in any case to those of us who were so advanced in age we could no longer endure the pain or the weight of so many years, so much passed time.
     No, what gave me pause was hypnotism, if indeed he ever had practiced it. His taking away the feather had brought back this old charge. But my godson sensed my sorrow. He watched me with his beautiful if almost pitiless hazel eyes.
     At last he took a seat on a little hand-carved stool beside me. He took my right hand in his and kissed it.
     "You are very troubled, Delia," he said at last. He seemed to be looking at the gnarled, very blue veins on the hand he had just kissed.
     "I am that," I said after a lengthy silence on my part.
     "You don't need to say more, Delia. We understand one another."
     "I know that, godson, but see here, I want to share with you all that is necessary for me to share. I want you to have everything you deserve."
     "I don't deserve much."
     "Never say that again. You don't know how precious you are, Clyde, and that is because you are perfection."
     He turned a furious red and faced away from me.
     "Let me think how I am to tell you, Clyde." I spoke so low he cupped his ear and then he again took my hand in his.
     "I can see it's something you've got to share."
     "Unwillingly, Clyde, so unwillingly. Perhaps, though, when I tell you, you won't think it's worth troubling about."
     He nodded encouragement.
     "Clyde, years ago before even your parents were born, before the days of Uncle Enos, Dr. Noddy was charged with having practiced hypnotism on his patients.
     Clyde's mouth came open and then he closed it tight. I thought his lips had formed a cuss word.
     We sat in silence for a lengthy while.
     "That is why his taking away the feather has worried me."
     "And worries me now," he almost gasped.
     "My worry over the white feather finally recalled the charge he had hypnotized some of his patients."
     "But what is the connection," he wondered, "between a bird's feather and hypnotism?"
     "I don't know myself, Clyde. Only I feel the two have a connection we don't understand."
     He smiled a strange smile.
     "We must be calm and patient. Maybe nothing will happen at all and we will resume our old quiet evenings," I said.
     He released my hand softly.
     Looking into his face, yes, I saw what I had feared. My trouble had fallen upon him. And so that long evening drew to its close.
     For a whole month we could do nothing but wait in suspense for Dr. Noddy's return. Now that I come to think of it, how happy I would have been if there had been no Dr. Noddy! Yes, I do think and believe that had he never appeared out of the fog and the snow and the bitter winds, Clyde and I would have been happy and without real sorrow forever. Dr. Noddy, having found the clue, the feather, began to dig and delve, uncover and discover, sift evidence, draw conclusions and then shatter all our peace and love along with our parlor song evenings and Clyde's solos on the jew's harp. All was to be spoiled, shattered, brought to nothing.
     But then, as someone was to tell me much later (perhaps it was one of the gypsy fortune-tellers who happen by in this part of the world), someone said to me, "Had it not been Dr. Noddy, there would have been someone else to have brought sorrow and change into your lives."
     "Then call it destiny, why don't you?" I shouted to this forgotten person, gypsy or preacher or peddler or whoever it was who made the point. Oh well, then, just call it Dr. Noddy and be done with it.

"In our part of the world, nature sometimes is enabled to work out phenomena not observed by ordinary people," Dr. Noddy began on his next visit, sounding a little like a preacher.
     Dr. Noddy had tasted the wine Clyde had brought him from the cellar even more sparingly if possible than was our own custom. (I had felt the physician needed wine to judge by his haggard and weary appearance.)
     To my embarrassment he fished out a piece of cork, tiny but, as I saw, very distasteful to him.
     "Fetch Doctor a clean glass," I suggested to Clyde.
     Dr. Noddy meanwhile went on talking about nature's often indulging in her own schemes and experiments, indifferent to man.
     "She in the end can only baffle us. Our most indefatigable scholars and scientists finally admit defeat and throw up their hands to acknowledge Her inscrutable puissance."
     I looked into my wineglass as if also searching for pieces of cork. Clyde had meanwhile brought Dr. Noddy a sparkling clean glass. He had opened a new bottle and poured out fresh wine.
     "Dr. Noddy was saying, Clyde, whilst you were out of earshot, that Nature is an inscrutable goddess," I summarized the Doctor's speech.
     "Yes," Clyde answered and gave me a look inviting instruction. I could only manage a kind of sad sour smile.
     "The feather," Dr. Noddy began again, pulling it out now from his huge wallet, "is one of her pranks."
     Clyde and I exchanged quick glances.
     "But we should let Clyde here expatiate on Dame Nature's hidden ways and purposes. Your godson was known, from the time he came to live with Uncle Enos, as a true son of the wilderness, a boon companion to wild creatures and the migratory fowl."
     Clyde lowered his head down almost to the rim of his wineglass.
     "Our young man therefore must have known that nearby there lived a perfect battalion of white crows, or perhaps they were white blackbirds!"
     At that moment Clyde gave out a short stifled gasp which may have chilled Dr. Noddy into silence. To my uneasiness I saw Dr. Noddy rise and go over to my godson. He took both Clyde's hands and held them tightly and then slowly allowed the hands to fall to his sides. Dr. Noddy then touched Clyde's eyes with both his hands. When the doctor removed his hands, Clyde's eyes were closed.
     "Please tell us now," Dr. Noddy moved even closer to Clyde, "if you know of the birds I am speaking of."
     "I am not positive," Clyde said in a stern, even grand tone so unlike the way he usually spoke. He kept his eyes still closed.
     "You must have known there were white crows or white blackbirds, what some who delve into their histories call a sport of nature."
     "I often thought," Clyde spoke musingly and in an almost small-boy voice now, "often would have sworn I saw white birds in the vicinity of the Bell Tower."
     "The Bell Tower!" I could not help but gasp. The Bell Tower was one of the many deserted large buildings which I had long ago sold to Uncle Enos at a very low price.
     "You see," Dr. Noddy turned to me. "We have our witness!"
     "But what can it all mean?" I spoke with partial vexation. "It is so late, Dr. Noddy, in time I mean. Must we go round Robin Hood's barn before you tell us what you have found out?"
     "This feather," Dr. Noddy now held it again and almost shook it in my face, "let Clyde expand upon it." The old man turned now to my godson. "Open your eyes, Clyde!" He extended the feather to Clyde. "Tell us what you think, now, my boy."
     Clyde shrank back in alarm from the feather. "It could certainly be from a white crow if there is such a bird," my godson said.
     "Or a white blackbird, Clyde?"
     Clyde opened his eyes wide and stared at his questioner. "All I know, Delia," Clyde turned to me, "is, yes, I have seen white birds flying near the Bell Tower, and sometimes. . . "
     "And sometimes," Dr. Noddy made as if to rise from his chair.
     "Sometimes flying into the open or the broken windows of the Bell Tower."
     "And did you ever see a white crow carrying anything in its beak when you saw it making its way to your Bell Tower?" Clyde's eyes closed again.
     "I may have, sir, yes, I may have spied something there, but you see," and he again turned his eyes now opened to me, "you see I was so startled to glimpse a large white bird against the high green trees and the dark sky, for near the Bell Tower the sky always looks dark. I was startled and I was scared." Some quick small tears escaped from his right eye.
     "And could those things the white bird carried, Clyde, could they have been jewels?"
     At that very moment, the wineglass fell from Clyde's hand and he slipped from his chair and fell prone to the thick carpet below.
     Dr. Noddy rushed to his side. I hurried also and bent over my prostrate godson.
     "Oh, Dr. Noddy, for pity's sake, he is not dead, is he!"
     Dr. Noddy turned a deprecatory gaze in my direction. "Help me carry him to that big sofa yonder," he said in reply.
     Oh, I was more than opposed by then to Dr. Noddy, seeing my godson lying there as if in his coffin. I blamed it all on the old physician. "You frightened him, Doctor," I shouted.
     I was surprised at my own angry words leveled against him. I would look now to my godson lying there as if passed over and then return my gaze to Noddy. I must have actually sworn, for when I came out of my fit of anger I heard the old man say, as if he was also in a dream, "I never would have thought I would hear you use such language. And against someone who has only your good at heart, Delia. Only your good!"
     Taking me gently by the hand he ushered me into a seldom-used little sitting room. The word hypnotism seemed at that moment to be not a word but a being, perhaps it was a bird flying about the room.
     "What I want to impart to you, Delia," the old physician began, "is simply this. I must now take action. I and I alone must pay a visit to the Bell Tower. For in its ruined masonry there lies the final explanation of the mystery."
     The very mention of the Bell Tower had always filled me with a palsylike terror, so when Dr. Noddy announced that he must go there I could not find a word to say to him.
     "Did you hear me, Delia?" he finally spoke in a querulous but soft tone.
     "If you think you must, dear friend," I managed to reply. "If there is no other way."
     "But now we must look in on Clyde," he said after a pause. At the same time he failed to make a motion to rise. A heavy long silence ensued on both our parts when unexpectedly my godson himself entered our private sitting room. We both stared without greeting him.
     Clyde looked refreshed after his slumber. His faced had resumed its high coloring, and he smiled at us as he took a seat next to Dr. Noddy.
     "I have been telling Delia, Clyde, that I must make a special visit to the Bell Tower."
     Clyde's face fell and a slight paleness again spread over his features.
     "Unless you object, Clyde," the doctor added.
     As I say, the very mention of the Bell Tower had always filled me with dread and loathing. But I had never told Clyde or Dr. Noddy the partial reason for my aversion. I did not tell them now what it was which troubled me. My great uncle had committed suicide in the Tower over a hundred years ago, and then later my cousin Keith had fallen from the top of the edifice to his death.
     These deaths had been all but forgotten in our village, and perhaps even I no longer remembered them until Dr. Noddy announced he was about to pay a visit there.
     While I was lost in these musings I suddenly came to myself in time to see Noddy buttoning up his great coat preparatory to leaving.
     "But you can't be paying your visit there now!" I cautioned him. "What with a bad storm coming on and with the freezing cold and snow what it is."
     "This is one visit that should not be postponed, Delia! So stop once and for all your fussing."
     He actually blew a kiss to me, and raised his hand to Clyde in farewell.
     I watched him go from the big front window. The wind had changed and was blowing from a northeast direction. The sycamore trees were bending almost to the ground in a fashion such as I could not ever recall.
     I came back to my seat.
     "Are you warm enough, Delia?" Clyde asked with smiling concern.
     "Clyde, listen," I began, gazing at him intently.
     "Yes, Delia, speak your mind," he said gaily, almost as if we were again partaking of the jollity of our evenings.
     "We must be prepared, Clyde, for whatever our good doctor will discover in the Bell Tower," I said in a lackluster manner.
     Clyde gazed down at the carpet under his feet.
     I felt then that if I were not who I was I would be afraid to be alone that night with Clyde Furness. But I had gone beyond fear.
     "Shan't we have our evening wine, Delia?" he said, and as he spoke fresh disquietude began again.
     "Please, dear boy, let's have our wine."
     We drank if possible even more sparingly. I believe indeed we barely touched the wineglasses to our lips. Time passed in a churchlike silence as we sat waiting for the doctor's return. I more than Clyde could visualize the many steps the old man must climb before he reached the top floor of the Tower. And I wondered indeed if he would be able to summon the strength to make it. Perhaps the visit thither would be too much for his old bones.
     It was the longest evening I can recall. And what made it even more painful was that as I studied my godson I realized he was no longer the Clyde Furness I had been so happy with. No, he had changed. I studied his face for a sign, but there was no sign-his face was closed to me. Then began a current of words which will remain with me to the end of my days:
     "It's hard for me to believe, Clyde, our good doctor's theory that it is a bird which has taken my ancestors' jewels."
     Clyde straightened up to gaze at me intently.
     "Ah, but, Delia, do you understand how hard it has been for me over and again these many weeks to have to listen to your doubts and suspicions!"
     "But doubts and suspicions, Clyde, have no claim upon you where I am concerned."
     "No claim," he spoke, in a bitterness which took me totally by surprise. "Perhaps, Delia, not in your mind, but what about mine?"
     "But Clyde, for God in heaven's sake you can't believe that I regard you as . . . " But I could not finish the sentence. Clyde finished it for me.
     "That I am the white blackbird, Delia? For that is what you think in your inmost being."
     Then I cried out, "Never, never has such a thought crossed my mind!"
     "Perhaps not in your waking hours, Delia. But in your deepest being, in your troubled sleeping hours, Delia, I feel you think I am the white blackbird."
     I could think of no response to make then to his dreadful avalanche of words launched against me. Nothing, I came to see, could dispel his thought that I considered him the thief, the white blackbird himself. My mouth was dry. My heart itself was stilled. My godson was lost to me, I all at once realized. He would never again be the young and faithful evening companion who had given my life its greatest happiness. As he returned my gaze I saw that he understood what I felt and he looked away not only in sadness but in grief. I knew then he would leave me.
     Yet we had to sit on like sentinels, our worry growing as the minutes and the hours slipped by.
     It was long past midnight and we sat on. We neither of us wanted more wine. But at last Clyde insisted he make some coffee, and I was too troubled and weak to offer to make it myself.
     As we were sipping our second cup of the Arabian brew we heard footsteps, and then banging on the door with a heavy walking stick.
     Clyde and I both cried out with relief when Dr. Noddy, covered with wet snow and carrying three parcels, stomped in, his white breath covering his face like a mask.
     "Help me, my boy," Dr. Noddy scolded. He was handing Clyde three packages wrapped in cloth of old cramoisie velvet.
     "And be careful, put them over there on that big oak table, why don't you, where they used to feed the threshers in summers gone by."
     As Clyde was carrying the parcels to the oak table, I saw with surprise Dr. Noddy pick up Clyde's second cup of Arabian coffee and gulp it all down at one swallow. He wiped his mustache on a stray napkin near the cup!
     "Help me off with my great coat, Delia, for I'm frozen to the bone and my hands are cakes of ice."
     As soon as I had helped him off with his coat and Clyde had hung it on a hall tree, Dr. Noddy collapsed on one of the larger settees. He took off his spectacles and wiped them and muttered something inaudible.
     Because he kept his eyes closed, I thought for a while the doctor had fallen into one of those slumbers I had observed in him before. My own eyes felt heavy as lead.
     Then I heard him speaking in louder than usual volume:
     "I have fetched back everything, Delia, that was missing or lost to you. And I have wrapped what I've found in scraps and shreds from the crimson hanging curtains of the Bell Tower." His voice had an unaccustomed ring of jubilee to it.
     "Bring out the first package, Clyde," he shouted the order, and as he spoke he waved both his arms like the conductor of a band.
     Clyde carried the first bundle morosely and placed it on the coffee table before us.
     "Now, Delia, let us begin!" Noddy snapped one of the cords with his bone pocket knife and began undoing the bundle of its coverings with a ferocious swiftness.
     I felt weak as water as he exposed to view, one after the other, my diamond necklace, my emerald brooch, my ruby rings, my pearl necklace and, last of all, my sapphire earrings!
     "Tell me they are yours, Delia," Noddy roared as only a deaf man can.
     I nodded.
     "And don't weep," he cautioned me. "We'll have no bawling here tonight after the trouble I've been to in the Tower!
     At a signal from the doctor, Clyde fetched to the table even more doggedly the second package, and this time my godson watched as the doctor undid the wrappings.
     "Tell us what you see," Dr. Noddy scolded and glowered.
     "My gold necklace," I answered, "and yes, my diamond choker, and those are my amethyst rings and that priceless lavaliere and -- oh see -- my long-forgotten gold bracelet."
     I went on and on. But my eyes were swimming with the tears he had forbidden me to shed.
     Then the third bundle was produced, unwrapped and displayed before us as if I were presiding at Judgment Day itself.
     "They are all mine, doctor," I testified, avoiding his direful stare. I touched the gems softly and looked away.
     "What treasures," Clyde kept mumbling and shaking his head.
     My eyes were all on Clyde rather than the treasures, for I took note again that it was not so much perhaps Dr. Noddy who had taken him away from me, it was the power of the treasures them- selves which had separated my godson and me forever.
     And so the jewels which I had never wanted in my possession from the beginning were returned again to be mine. Their theft or disappearance had plagued me, of course, over the years as a puzzle will tease and torment one, but now seeing them again in my possession all I could think of was the fact that their restoration was the cause of Clyde's no longer being mine, no longer loving me! I was unable to explain this belief even to myself but I knew it was the truth.
     The next day Clyde, holding his few belongings in a kind of sailor's duffel bag, his eyes desperately looking away from my face, managed to get out the words:
     "Delia, my dear friend, now that the weather is beginning to clear, I do feel I must be returning to Uncle Enos's so I can look after his property as I promised him in his last hours."
     Had he stabbed me with one of my servants' hunting knives his words could not have struck me deeper. I could barely hold out my hand to him.
     "I have, you know too, a bounden duty to see that his property is kept as he wanted me to keep it," he could barely whisper. "But should you need me you have only to call, and I will respond."
     I am sure a hundred things came to both our lips as we stood facing one another in our farewell. Instead, all we could do was gaze for a last time into each other's eyes.
     With Clyde's return "in bounden duty" to his Uncle Enos's, there went our evenings of wine sipping and parlor songs and all the other things that had made for me complete happiness.
     I was left then with only the stolen jewels, stolen, according to our Dr. Noddy, by a breed of white blackbird known as far back as remote antiquity as creatures irresistibly attracted to steal anything which was shining bright and dazzling.

Shortly after Clyde had departed for his uncle's, I had called some world-famous jewel merchants for a final appraisal of the treasures. The appraisers came on the heels of my godson's departure. The men reminded me of London policemen or detectives, impeccable gentlemen, formal and with a stultifying politeness. As they appraised my jewels, however, even they would pause from time to time and briefly stare at me with something like incomprehension. They would break the silence then to say in their dry clear voices:
     "Is nothing missing, ma'am?"
     "Nothing at all," I would reply to the same question put to me again and again.
     I had by then taken such a horror to the jewels and to their beauty which everyone had always spoken of with bated breath that even to draw near them brought on me a kind of fit of shuddering.
     After I had signed countless pages of documents, the appraisers hauled the whole collection off to a famous safety vault in Montreal.
     Then for the first time in years I felt a kind of relief that would have been, if not happiness, a kind of benediction or thanksgiving, had I not been so aware I had lost forever my evenings with my godson.