he said, and put spells on them to injure the magicians’ enemies—then when they stuck pins in the wax, or burned it, the enemies were supposed to suffer with pain. But I didn’t know they did that sort of thing in Jamaica.”

“Sometimes,” Mr. Neale admitted. “But why did you come back to dig when Ma’am Sib ordered you away?”

“It isn’t her field,” Cliff answered. “I asked father. And, besides, there is another trench started. See! Over there.” He pointed to the digging that had been done at a point closer to the cabin.

“Can they really hurt you—these voodoo people?” Tom asked. “I began to feel sort of uneasy——”Mr. Neale spoke quietly in reply. “The boy was told to do as he did so as to suggest an idea to you,” he explained. “You see, all sorts of magic depend on our being afraid. We are afraid of things we do not understand. Because we don’t understand them we think ‘maybe they do have power to hurt us.’”

“It’s just the same as if I came to Tom some morning and looked at him as if something was wrong, and then asked him what’s the matter,” Cliff said. “He’d wonder and then begin to think that something was wrong and he would begin to feel sick, if he kept thinking about it long enough.”

“Exactly,” Mr. Neale replied. “Voodoo depends on ignorance and fear. Because people are ignorant and afraid, their own minds work against them. Tom let himself imagine there was danger——”

“I knew it,” Tom said, shamefacedly, “but it got the best of me.”

“But why did she do it?” demanded Nicky. “Not just because we didn’t obey her and stop digging——”

“I claim there must be something hidden here that she knows about and she tried, the way she is used to doing, to drive us away,” Cliff declared.

“There isn’t anything buried here that I have heard about,” Clarence Neale responded. He turned to the woman, “Ma’m Sib, what induced you to try to frighten these friends of mine?”

“Perhaps I can help you?” inquired a voice behind them. So absorbed had they all been in the discussion that they had not noticed the arrival of a slender colored fellow of nineteen. He stood just back of them, smiling pleasantly. He was as black as ebony, with perfect, white teeth which showed in strong contrast when he gave his good-natured smile. He spoke without the Southern Negro’s dialect, as is the custom of all the Jamaica inhabitants whose speech is often of the 

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