was placing slabs of bacon in the pan. "Nothing like a good old-fashioned peasant's breakfast," he laughed as Peter came in the door several minutes later. "So, you brought a goat, heh?" he noticed. "Are you figuring on starting in soon?"

Peter set a small kid on the floor and watched it scamper about the room, looking for an exit. "Yes, we might as well. I don't like this business at all. I wish to get it over with as soon as possible, and——" Peter eyed Mirestone squarely. "I expect to be paid well for my trouble." He was trying to make himself believe that that was his only reason for complying with Mirestone's demands. Actually he was not so sure....

As the heat of the noon day sun blasted down on their backs, Mirestone watched Peter pass a feather, freshly plucked from a white Leghorn, under the nose of the bleating kid. Mirestone listened carefully to what Peter was telling him. The breath of the victim had to be spread over the feather before anything further could be done.

"Tie him," commanded Peter. Mirestone held the goat by the scruff of his neck and fastened a halter about him. The other end was secured to a stake allowing the kid to run about in a circle of ten feet or so in diameter.

"We will leave him for awhile," said Peter as he walked back to the kitchen.

Mirestone followed in the Dutchman's footsteps, and when they were inside, he listened intently as Peter recited a monosyllabic chant over the feather. "The chant is easy enough to learn," Peter assured him. "You will master it quickly."

"I understand so far," Mirestone said.

"Then that is all," Peter finished, "except that you can hang the feather up and watch it grow red."

"Red?"

"Yes," Peter explained, "That is the only way you can tell if the hex has worked."

Peter went to a chest at the foot of his bed and drew out a small box of sewing utensils. He broke off a piece of black thread and replaced the box in the chest. "Now I'll show you what I mean," Peter spoke wearily as he tied the feather with the thread and suspended it from one of the rafters in the room. "Just sit and watch."

It was not many minutes before a light red tint crept up the feather's quill, spreading slowly outwards towards the fringed edges. Deeper and deeper grew the intensity of the color until it 

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