they could see the Lonesome
Pine. And all the time she worked at her studies tirelessly--and when
she was done with her lessons, she read the fairy books that Hale got
for her--read them until "Paul and Virginia" fell into her hands, and
then there were no more fairy stories for little June. Often, late at
night, Hale, from the porch of his cottage, could see the light of
her lamp sending its beam across the dark water of the mill-pond, and
finally he got worried by the paleness of her face and sent her to
the doctor. She went unwillingly, and when she came back she reported
placidly that "organatically she was all right, the doctor said," but
Hale was glad that vacation would soon come. At the beginning of the
last week of school he brought a little present for her from New York--a
slender necklace of gold with a little reddish stone-pendant that was
the shape of a cross. Hale pulled the trinket from his pocket as they
were walking down the river-bank at sunset and the little girl quivered
like an aspen-leaf in a sudden puff of wind.

"Hit's a fairy-stone," she cried excitedly.

"Why, where on earth did you--"

"Why, sister Sally told me about 'em. She said folks found 'em somewhere
over here in Virginny, an' all her life she was a-wishin' fer one an'
she never could git it"--her eyes filled--"seems like ever'thing she
wanted is a-comin' to me."

"Do you know the story of it, too?" asked Hale.

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