'How do you know?' I said, staring at him. 'I have never seen such a thing on her. And I have seen the girl two or three times.'
'Well, I will tell you,' he answered, glancing first at the window and then at Steve to be sure that we were not overheard. 'I'll tell you. When we had carried you into the house the other night she took off her kerchief, to tear a piece from it to bind up your head. That uncovered the necklace. She was quick to cover it up, when she remembered herself, but not quick enough.'
'Is it of gold?' I asked.
He nodded. 'Fifteen or sixteen links I should say, and each as big as a small walnut. Carved and shaped like a walnut too.'
'It may be silver-gilt.'
He laughed. 'I am a smith, though only a locksmith,' he said. 'Trust me for knowing gold. I doubt it came from Magdeburg; I doubt it did. Magdeburg, or Halle, which my Lord Tilly ravaged about that time. And if so there is blood upon it. It will bring the girl no luck, depend upon it.'
'If we talk about it, I'll be sworn it will not!' I answered savagely. 'There are plenty here who would twist her neck for so much as a link of it.'
'You are right, Master Martin,' he answered meekly. 'Perhaps I should not have mentioned it; but I know that you are safe. And after all the girl has done nothing.'
That was true, but it did not content me. I wished he had not seen what he had, or that he had not told me the tale. A minute before I had been able to think of the girl with pure satisfaction; to picture with a pleasant warmth about my heart her gentleness, her courage, her dark mild beauty that belonged as much to childhood as womanhood, the thought for others that made her flight a perpetual saving. But this spoiled all. The mere possession of this necklace, much more the use of it, seemed to sully her in my eyes, to taint her freshness, to steal the perfume from her youth.
