Did this strange, girlish charlatan see in my face some signs of shrinking
when she spoke of enemies, and set me down for a coward whose weakness
might be profitable? Very likely. At all events she plucked a long brass
pin, with a round bead for a head, from some part of her dress, and holding
the point in her fingers, and exhibiting the treasure before my eyes, she
told me that I must get a charmed pin like that, which her grandmother had
given to her, and she ran glibly through a story of all the magic expended
on it, and told me she could not part with it; but its virtue was that you
were to stick it through the blanket, and while it was there neither rat,
nor cat, nor snake--and then came two more terms in the catalogue, which I
suppose belonged to the gipsy dialect, and which she explained to mean, as
well as I could understand, the first a malevolent spirit, and the second
'a cove to cut your throat,' could approach or hurt you.
A charm like that, she gave me to understand, I must by hook or by crook
obtain. She had not a second. None of her people in the camp over there
possessed one.
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