"But what I want to know," he continued, "is how you got it. How did you come to know it?"
Adela remained silent; but her father spoke, after a pause, in a serious, hollow voice. "It is very old," he said. "It is a great charm. We have always known it."
"How do you mean—'you'?"
"Our people," replied the old man, gravely.
"But not all the people around here," Lance interposed. "Miss Jessie doesn't know it."
Reefe made a gesture of dissent that approached the disdainful. "No," he exclaimed, with a sort of gutteral grunt after the word; "she don't know—of course."
"But I have known it well," Lance said. "I saw it years ago in England."
"You?" cried Reefe, with the first indication of marked feeling that he had betrayed during the interview. "Who are you, then?"
"Oh, I'm a humble citizen named Lance!" said the young man, quietly. "But I know that motto; it has been in our family for a long time."
The old man seemed to withdraw suddenly into himself. "It is a great charm," he repeated, slowly. "Wonderful! It keeps off harm and trouble. My father gave it to me."