June shook her head. “Sister Sally said it was a luck-piece. Nothin' could happen to ye when ye was carryin' it, but it was awful bad luck if you lost it.” Hale put it around her neck and fastened the clasp and June kept hold of the little cross with one hand.
“Well, you mustn't lose it,” he said.
“No—no—no,” she repeated breathlessly, and Hale told her the pretty story of the stone as they strolled back to supper. The little crosses were to be found only in a certain valley in Virginia, so perfect in shape that they seemed to have been chiselled by hand, and they were a great mystery to the men who knew all about rocks—the geologists.
“The ge-ol-o-gists,” repeated June.
These men said there was no crystallization—nothing like them, amended Hale—elsewhere in the world, and that just as crosses were of different shapes—Roman, Maltese and St. Andrew's—so, too, these crosses were found in all these different shapes. And the myth—the story—was that this little valley was once inhabited by fairies—June's eyes lighted, for it was a fairy story after all—and that when a strange messenger brought them the news of Christ's crucifixion, they wept, and their tears, as they fell to the ground, were turned into tiny crosses of stone. Even the Indians had some queer feeling about them, and for a long, long time people who found them had used them as charms to bring good luck and ward off harm.
“And that's for you,” he said, “because you've been such a good little girl and have studied so hard. School's most over now and I reckon you'll be right glad to get home again.”
June made no answer, but at the gate she looked suddenly up at him.
“Have you got one, too?” she asked, and she seemed much disturbed when Hale shook his head.
“Well, I'LL git—GET—you one—some day.”
“All right,” laughed Hale.