"That is a fine gem of yours, my dear; and if I owned such a treasure I shouldn't leave it lying around in that careless fashion. Who knows what might happen to it, away down there on the New Marsh? What if a gull, now, should come along and swallow it, to help him grind his fish bones."
"Don't be silly, Jack!" said the girl, her eyes dilating as she watched the mystic beam. "You know you don't half like the look of it yourself. It makes you feel uncanny, and you're just talking nonsense to make believe you don't think there is anything queer about it!"
"Quite the contrary, I assure you, O Mistress of the Witch Stone, O Cynosure of the 'Eye of Gluskâp!'" answered Desbra. "I am, indeed, so much impressed that I was taking pains to remind the Powers of the transfer I have just effected! I desire to hide me from the 'Eye of Gluskâp' by taking refuge behind a certain little spinster's petticoats!"
There was a long silence, while Desbra kept gazing on the mystic gleam as if fascinated. At last Jessie made a move as if she thought it time to return to the house, whereupon the young man, waking out of his fit of abstraction, said slowly:—
"Do you know, it seems to me now as if you had been telling me an old story. I feel as if you had merely recalled to my memory incidents which I had long forgotten. I remember it all now, with much that I think you did not tell me. Looking at that strange point of light I have seen,—did you tell me anything of an old man dying in a boat and being brought to shore just as Marie was leaving for the ship? That is a scene that stands out upon my memory sharply now. And did you say anything about an old priest? I saw him leaning over the side of the boat and slipping something into Mane's sack."
"No," said Jessie, "I didn't tell you any of that, though it all happened as you say. Let us go home, Jack, it frightens me terribly. Oh, I wish you hadn't bought that Marsh!" and she clung trembling to the young man's arm.
"But what can it mean?" persisted Desbra, as they descended the hill. "Why should I think that I was there when it all happened,—that it all happened to me, in fact? My grandmother was of French blood,—perhaps Acadian blood, for my grandfather married her, in the West Indies. After the exile the Acadians, you say, were scattered all over the face of the New World! Can there be in my veins any of the blood of that unhappy people?"
Jessie stopped short and looked up at her lover's face. "Why, your name," she cried, "sounds as if it might have been French once!"
"My grandfather's name was Manners Sutton," responded Desbra, musing. "My father had to take my grandfather's name to inherit some property in Martinique. I, of course, pronounce my name in English fashion, but it is spelled just as my father's was—D-e-s-b-r-a!"
As the young Englishman gave his name its French accent and pronunciation, Jessie uttered a little cry of intelligence and wonder. She looked at her lover a moment in silence, and then said very slowly, very deliberately, pausing for every word to tell.