They are called a
nest of boxes. The inner one contained a little horn thing that looked
like a pill-box, and that had a charm in it.
It was a portion of the nail of St Francis's big toe, which never
failed to work a cure on them who believed in it. She said she bought
it from a French prisoner, who had deserted from Melville Island, at
Halifax, during the last war. She gave him a suit of clothes, two
shirts, six pair of stockings, and eight dollars for it. The box was
only a bit of bone, and not worthy of the sacred relic, but she
couldn't afford to get a gold one for it.
"Poor St Croix," she said, "I shall never see him again. He had great
larning; he could both read and write. When he sold me that holy
thing, he said:
"'Madam, I am afraid something dreadful will happen to me before long
for selling that relic. When danger and trouble come, where will be my
charm then?'
"Well, sure enough, two nights after (it was a very dark night) the
dogs barked dreadful, and in the morning Peter La Roue, when he got
up, saw his father's head on the gate-post, grinnin' at him, and his
daughter Annie's handkerchief tied over his crown and down under his
chin. And St Croix was gone, and Annie was in a trance, and the
priest's desk was gone, with two hundred pounds of money in it; and
old Jodrie's ram had a saddle and bridle on, and was tied to a gate of
the widow of Justine Robisheau, that was drowned in a well at Halifax;
and Simon Como's boat put off to sea of itself, and was no more heard
of.
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