"Is that all?" said the Judge, shading his face with his hand.
"No, my Lord," replied the woman. "When the children are near to sleep, I put my charm in their hands."
"Whence had you this charm?" he said. "And what is it?"
"I pray your Lordship," cried the woman, "ask me not, for I can never tell."
"Let me see it," said the Judge, with a smile.
So the woman, trembling and reluctant, drew a dark-red ribbon from her breast, and at the end of it a packet of fine linen bound closely with white silk. She laid it before the Judge. He broke the silken thread and unrolled the linen, fold after fold, until he came to a yellow piece of paper with writing on it, and in the paper a crooked sixpence of King James.
The coin and the scrap of paper lay in his hand as he looked up and met the shrewd questioning eyes of Sir Richard.
"Yes," answered the Baron Harcourt in a low voice, "you have seen the coin before, and now you may read what is written on the paper."
"Now I know," said Sir Richard, shaking his head, "what charm you gave to the woman and her child forty years ago. Was I not right? It was a deception."
"Who knows?" said the Baron Harcourt cheerfully. "It has not failed to-day. Fortune has favoured Faith."