suit, I wonder why he acts in that way?"

The question he could not answer, so dismissing it from his memory, he retired to the smoking-room with a pipe and a novel. When Jen and David returned he intended to question both, and, if possible, get to the bottom of these thickening mysteries.

"Hang it!" soliloquized Maurice over his book, "since yesterday everything seems to have gone wrong. That negress and Dr. Etwald are at the bottom of affairs. But I can't see their reasons for mixing things up so."

Then he laid aside his book to think, and through the smoke curling from his pipe he stared idly at the opposite wall. It chanced to be that upon which the barbaric weapons before alluded to were arranged, and conspicuous among them glittered the golden handle of the devil-stick. Recalling the mention of Voodoo, and Etwald's reference to African witchcraft, Maurice connected in his own mind the devil-stick with those barbarisms, and on the impulse of the moment he rose to examine the magic wand. Handling it carefully--for he dreaded the poison, although it was said to be dried up--he wondered if Dido could make use of it were it in her possession.

"I heard Mrs. Dallas say that Dido's people came from Ashantee," soliloquized Maurice, "so I have no doubt she can work the infernal thing. Perhaps she knows enough to fill the bag with fresh poison. If she did so, I wouldn't trust myself near her. She would be sure to experiment on me."

At this moment Major Jen, looking slightly worried, entered the room, and seeing the devil-stick in the hand of Maurice, he stopped short with an ejaculation of surprise.

"You are looking at that thing, Maurice?" said he, wonderingly. "Now that is strange."

"Why should it be strange?"

"Because I have just been talking about it with Dr. Etwald."

"Oh!" said Maurice, his thoughts flying back to the mysterious influence which he had seen Etwald exercise over Dido. "And what was the doctor saying?"

Major Jen threw himself into a chair and frowned.

"A great deal. He saw the devil-stick the other night--"

"Last night?"

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