gled.

Mrs. Egg retreated into her bedroom, awed. Adam carried in her
breakfast and shut the door with a foot.

He complained: "Went in to breakfast at Edie's. Of course she's only
sixteen, but I could make better biscuits myself. Lay down, Mamma."

He began to butter slices of toast, in silence, expertly. Mrs. Egg
drank her coffee in rapture that rose toward ecstasy as Adam made
himself a sandwich of toast and marmalade and sat down at her feet to
consume it.

THE VICTIM OF HIS VISION

By GERALD CHITTENDEN

From _Scribner's_

I

"There's no doubt about it," said the hardware drummer with the
pock-pitted cheeks. He seemed glad that there was no doubt--smacked
his lips over it and went on. "Obeah--that's black magic; and
voodoo--that's snake-worship. The island is rotten with 'em--rotten
with 'em."

He looked sidelong over his empty glass at the Reverend Arthur
Simpson. Many human things were foreign to the clergyman: he was
uneasy about being in the _Arequipa's_ smoke-room at all, for
instance, and especially uneasy about sitting there with the drummer.

"But--human sacrifice!" he protested. "You spoke of human sacrifice."

"And cannibalism. _La chevre sans cornes_--the goat without
horns--that means an unblemished child less than three years old. It's
frequently done. They string it up by its heels, cut its throat, and
drink the blood. Then they eat it. Regular ceremony--the _mamaloi_
officiates."

"Who officiates?"

"The _mamaloi_--the priestess."

Simpson jerked himself out of his chair and went on deck. Occasionally
his imagination worked loose from control and tormented him as it was
doing now. There was a grizzly vividness in the drummer's description.
It was well toward morning before Simpson grasped again his usual
certainty of purpose and grew able to thank God that he had been born
into a very wicked world. There was much for a missionary to do in
Hayti--he saw that before the night grew thin, and was glad.

Between dawn and daylight the land leaped out of the sea, all clear
blues and purples, incomparably fresh and incomparably 111 wistful in
that one golden hour of the tropic day before the sun has risen very
high--the disembodied spirit of an island. It lay, vague as hope at
first, in a jewel-tinted sea; the ship steamed toward it as through
the mists of creation's third morning, and all good things seemed
possible. Thus had Simpson, reared in an unfriendly land, imagined it,
for