After a few minutes Liney said in a whisper:—
“Balser, I’ve been thinking, and I’m going to tell you about something I have. It’s a great secret. No one knows of it but mother and father and I. I believe it’s the very thing we want for a charm. It looks like it, and it has strange words engraved upon it.”
Balser was alive with interest.
“Do you promise never to tell any one about it?” asked Liney.
“Yes, yes, indeed. Cross my heart, ’pon honour, hope to die.”
Balser’s plain, unadorned promise was enough to bind him to secrecy under ordinary circumstances, for he was a truthful boy; but when his lips were sealed by such oaths as “Cross my heart,” and “Hope to die,” death had no terrors which would have forced him to divulge.
“What is it? Quick, quick, Liney!”
“You’ll never tell?”
“No, cross my—”
“Well, I’ll tell you. I’ve a thing at home that’s almost like a cross, only the pieces cross each other in the middle and are broad at each end. It’s a little larger than a big button. It’s gold on the back and has a lot of pieces of glass, each the size of a small pea, on the front side. Only I don’t believe they’re glass at all. They are too bright for glass. You can see them in the dark, where there’s no light at all. They shine and glitter and sparkle, so that it almost makes you blink your eyes. Now you never saw glass like that, did you?”