llen into strange
company--stranger than any white man I've ever known."

"I am not afraid of voodoo," said Simpson rather scornfully.

"It would be better if you were a little afraid of it. I am--and I
know what I'm talking about. Look what's happened to you. There's the
Picard woman--she's the one who had President Simon Sam under her
thumb. Did you know he carried the symbols of voodoo next his heart?
And now Michaud, who's her right hand and has been for years. Looks
like deep water to me."

"I must not fear for my own body."

"That's not what I mean exactly, though I wish you were a little more
afraid for it. It might save me trouble--possibly save our government
trouble--in the end. But the consequences of letting voodoo acquire
any more power than it has may be far-reaching."

"I am not here to give it more power." Simpson, thoroughly angry, rose
to go. "It is my business to defeat it--to root it out."

"Godspeed to you in that"--Witherbee's voice was ironical. "But
remember what I tell you. The Picard woman is subtle, and Michaud is
subtle." Simpson had crossed the threshold, and only half heard the
consul's next remark. "Voodoo is more subtle than both of them
together. Look out for it."

Witherbee's warning did no more than make Simpson angry; he attributed
it to wrong motives--to jealousy perhaps to hostility certainly, and
neither jealousy nor hostility could speak true words. In spite of all
that he had heard he could not believe that voodoo was so powerful in
the island; this was the twentieth century, he insisted, and the most
enlightened country in the world was less than fifteen hundred miles
away; he forgot that opinions and not figures number the centuries,
and refused to see that distance had nothing to do with the case.
These were a people groping through the dark; when they saw the light
they could not help but welcome it, he thought. The idea that they
preferred their own way of life and their own religion, that they
would not embrace civilization till they were forced to do so at the
point of benevolent bayonets, never entered his head. His own way of
life was so obviously superior. He resolved to have nothing more to do
with Witherbee.

When he returned to the carpenter's house at about six that evening he
entered the council of elders that he found there with the
determination to place himself on an equality with them. It was to his
credit that he accomplished this feat, but it was no