"You knew the charm," old Reefe retorted; and his eyes twinkled obscurely, as he fixed them upon his visitor.
"That doesn't prove that I'm one of you," said Lance, rising, for the situation vexed him; he was becoming indignant. "It only shows that my people in England knew the rhyme long before yours were heard of."
Jessie rose as well. "I don't see what your father is thinking of," she observed, frigidly, to Adela. "Mr. Lance belongs to a very old family."
Something like a sarcastic chuckle seemed to escape from Reefe's bearded lips; but he remained quite impassive. It was impossible to tell whether or not he had made any sound.
"Before I go," Lance began, desperately, "I wish you'd tell me what this legend means. Did you have Indian ancestors, as well as English?"
He fixed his gaze intently and strenuously upon Adela as he spoke.
"I told you all I could," Adela answered, evasively; and began to resume her work upon one of the moss-boxes.
Reefe looked at him, with a trace of defiance now. "We have as good blood as any," he averred. "But we ask you no questions, and I don't see that we've got a call to answer any more. If ye want any yarb medicine—" And there he paused, indicating that he was ready for business.
There could not have been a completer collapse of the climax which Lance had thought to force. He turned away in disgust. "Come, Jessie," he said, "let us go." And Jessie was more than ready to accede.
But before they went he thanked Adela for her story, and bade good-by to her and her father. As he faced them in doing this, he noticed once more the baffling resemblance between Adela and Jessie, which their unlikeness in stature and general bearing rendered all the more peculiar; and the gray eyes of the Reefes troubled him by their enigmatic expression. The conviction was strong in his mind, that the cause of their silence was that they really had nothing more definite to tell him about their ancestry than what they had imparted. Yet he wished that they had not stopped at this point. Why did they have gray eyes? And yet, why should they not have them? Save for a slight bronze or coppery hue in their complexions, they were of the same European race that Lance and Jessie belonged to.