The Lucky Piece: A Tale of the North Woods

by Albert Bigelow Paine

There was something in her face just then that, had it not been for all that had come between them, might have made him take her in his arms.

"I—I care for what you are about to tell," he said.

She regarded him intently, and a great softness came into her eyes.

"It is the sequel of a story we heard together," she began, "that day on McIntyre, in the hermit's cabin. You remember that he spoke of the other child—a little girl—hers. This is the story of that little girl. You have heard something of her already—how the brother toiled for her and his mother—how she did not fully understand the bitterness of it all. Yet she tried to help—a little. She thought of many things. She had dreams that grew out of the fairy book her mother used to read to her, and she looked for Aladdin caves among the hills, and sometimes fancied herself borne away by the wind and the sea to some far Eastern land where the people would lay their treasures at her feet. But more than all she waited for the wonderful fairy prince who would one day come to her with some magic talisman of fortune which would make them all rich, and happy ever after.

"Yet, while she dreamed, she really tried to help in other ways—little ways of her own—and in the summer she picked berries and, standing where the stage went by, she held them out to the tourists who, when the stage halted, sometimes bought them for a few pennies. Oh, she was so glad when they bought them—the pennies were so precious—though it meant even more to her to be able to look for a moment into the faces of those strangers from another world, and to hear the very words that were spoken somewhere beyond the hills."

She paused, and Frank, who had leaned a bit nearer, started to speak, but she held up her hand for silence.

"One day, when the summer was over and all the people were going home—when she had gathered her last few berries, for the bushes were nearly bare—she stood at her place on the stone in front of the little house at the top of the hill, waiting for the stage. But when it came, the people only looked at her, for the horses did not stop, but galloped past to the bottom of the hill, while she stood looking after them, holding that last saucer of berries, which nobody would buy.

"But at the foot of the hill the stage did stop, and a boy, oh, such a handsome boy and so finely dressed, leaped out and ran back all the way up the hill to her, and stood before her just like the prince in the fairy tales she had read, and told her he had come to buy her berries. And then, just like the prince, he had only an enchanted coin—a talisman—his lucky piece. And this he gave to her, and he made her take it. He took her hand and shut it on the coin, promising he would come for it again some day, when he would give her for it anything she might wish, asking only that she keep it safe. And then, like the prince, he was gone, leaving her there with the enchanted coin. Oh, she hardly dared to look, for fear it might not be there after all. But when she opened her hand at last and saw that it had not vanished, then she was sure that all the tales were true, for her fairy prince had come to her at last."

Again Frank leaned forward to speak, a new light shining in his face, and again she raised her hand to restrain him.

"You would not help me," she said, "your memory was so poor. Now, you must let me tell the story.