ack Art, and gives me some
interesting particulars respecting a secret society of sorcerers, who
hold certain midnight revels in an empty saloon of a house somewhere in
the town. There is a kind of freemason mystery attached to their
proceedings, and none but members are in the secret. It appears,
however, that their dark deeds consist chiefly in a dead-of-night dance
around a defunct 'maja' or enchanted snake, by a number of people, most
of whom are attired in nature's vestments.

The watchman likewise tells me that the practice of witchcraft in Cuba
is sometimes attended with serious and fatal consequences, and that
crimes of the worst description are frequently the result of it. An
individual unwittingly takes his neighbour's life in obedience to
commands from a sanguinary sorcerer, who requires a certain weight of
human blood to complete the ingredients of an enchanted preparation.
'Bring me a couple of handfuls of hair, and four ounces of blood from
Fulano,' says the weird, who has been applied to for spiritual
absolution, 'and I will prepare you a contradano--a charm--that shall
rid you of your evil genius, and help you out of your present
difficulty.' Fulano objects to part with his 'personal' property, when
the request is made to him in a friendly way; so he gets a hard knock on
the head one day, when he least expects it, and if he escapes with his
life he is lucky.

Such instances of witchcraft as these, the sereno says, are found only
among the coloured population of Cuba, and when discovered the
perpetrators of the nefarious acts are brought to justice and severely
punished; but belief in necromancy exists even among the more
enlightened inhabitants of Cuba, and it is far from uncommon to hear of
highly respectable whites taking part in the practice of it.

Mateo then gives me his own personal experiences of the Black Art as a
warning against the danger which, he says, will surely threaten me if I
continue to visit the tobacconist family.

The watchman assures me that for many long weeks he had laboured under
the depressing influence of a spell. The unfortunate occurrence began
with an anonymous letter conveying the unwelcome information that a
certain enemy of Mateo's was engaged in brewing some dreadful mischief
for his especial benefit. In his professional capacity, the watchman has
more than one foe in the town, and it is therefore difficult to 'spot,'
and afterwards capture, the actual offender. The