"Very," said Jessie. "It's a perfect puzzle. I don't see what to make of it. But, Adela," she went on, addressing the girl, "why have you never told me this before?"
Adela responded only with a reticent smile, and her luminous gray eyes roved from Jessie to Lance and back again without betraying what she thought.
"We don't tell it," muttered her father. "It was our story--only for us."
"But you _have_ told it now," Jessie argued. "You've told Mr. Lance, and he is a stranger." Here Jessie blushed, and corrected herself: "Any way, he _was_ a stranger to you."
The old man raised his hand to point at Lance; and--by an odd coincidence--his forefinger, separated from the others, was curved with a beckoning emphasis, as if he were himself the Old-man-without-a-name of the legend. "_He_ is one of us," he declared.
"I'm not so sure of that!" Lance exclaimed, feeling that the mystery was going almost too far. "I don't see it at all."
"You knew the charm," old Reefe retorted; and his eyes twinkled obscurely, as he fixed them upon his visitor.
"That doesn't prove that I'm one of you," said Lance, rising, for the situation vexed him; he was becoming indignant. "It only shows that my people in England knew the rhyme long before yours were heard of."
Jessie rose as well. "I don't see what your father is thinking of," she observed, frigidly, to Adela. "Mr. Lance belongs to a very old family."
Something like a sarcastic chuckle seemed to escape from Reefe's bearded lips; but he remained quite impassive. It was impossible to tell whether or not he had made any sound.
"Before I go," Lance began, desperately, "I wish you'd tell me what this legend means. Did you have Indian ancestors, as well as English?"
He fixed his gaze intently and strenuously upon Adela as he spoke.
"I told you all I could," Adela answered, evasively; and began to resume her work upon one of the moss-boxes.
Reefe looked at him, with a trace of defiance now. "We have as good blood as any," he averred. "But we ask you no questions, and I don't see that we've got a call to answer any more. If ye want any yarb medicine--" And there he paused, indicating that he was ready for business.
There could not have been a completer collapse of the climax which Lance had thought to force. He turned away in disgust. "Come, Jessie," he said, "let us go." And Jessie was more than ready to accede.