"Mr. Lance is ever so much pleased with those things you let us have," she said. "And I can assure you he takes the greatest interest in some of them. I think he wants to ask you how you sew the beads, and how you make those moss-boxes." Adela laughed. "I don't know," she said. "I've done it so long--ever since I was a tiny girl. Ain't it so, dad?" Old Reefe, thus referred to, gave a nod, without saying anything. But Lance took advantage of the cue Jessie had given him to go into particulars with Adela as to her mode of manufacture and the several beauties of the articles she produced. Finally he came around to the subject of the belt and the pattern woven upon it. "Have you got any more of those?" he asked. "No," said Adela; "it was the last--the one you took. I can make another, if you want. I've got it all in my head." "And the rhyme, too?" Lance inquired, eagerly. "What? What's that?" Adela appeared a little dazed. "I mean the words," he explained. "Didn't you know there were words in it?" "Oh, that part along the middle," said the girl. Her gray eyes took on a far-off, dreamy expression. "Yes; they are words." Lance controlled his excitement, which still seemed to him causeless and rather annoying. "I wonder if I read them right?" he hazarded. "Would you like to see how they looked to me?" He drew out a bit of paper on which he had written them, and showed it to her. The action seemed to rouse her taciturn father slightly. But Adela gazed at the paper, and said, with an incredulous laugh: "Oh, no, they don't look like that!" "Can you read?" Lance demanded. "Yes, a little; but they don't look like that." "Well, at any rate, they mean something," he retorted; "and this is what they mean." He read the rhyme aloud, and their eyes met. "Yes," she admitted; "I suppose that's how it goes;" and she crooned the distich over, as if singing to herself. "But what I want to know," he continued, "is how you got it. How did you come to know it?" Adela remained silent; but her father spoke, after a pause, in a serious, hollow voice. "It is very old," he said. "It is a great charm. We have always known it." "How do you mean--'you'?" "Our people," replied the old man, gravely. "But not all the people around here," Lance interposed. "Miss Jessie doesn't know it." Reefe made a gesture of dissent that approached the disdainful. "No," he exclaimed, with a sort of gutteral grunt after the word; "_she_ don't know--of course." "But _I_ have known it well," Lance said. "I saw it years ago in England." "You?" cried Reefe, with the first indication of marked feeling that he had betrayed during the interview. "Who are you, then?" "Oh, I'm a humble citizen named Lance!" said the young man, quietly. "But I know that motto; it has been in our family for a long time." The old man seemed to withdraw suddenly into himself. "It is a great charm," he repeated, slowly. "Wonderful! It keeps off harm and trouble. My father gave it to me."