Daisy?" he said.

"I do not know what you mean, Mr. McFarlane."

"No? don't you? That's odd. You have been so long in the witch's
precincts. You have heard them, of course?"

"I do not know what you mean, Mr. McFarlane."

"Why you must have been bewitched. I wonder, now, if the witch's house
did not seem to you a palace?"

"It seemed a very nice place."

"And the witch herself a sable princess?"

"I think she is a great deal better than a princess."

"Exactly so," said Gary with a perfectly sober face. "The witch drew
water, didn't she?"

"I don't know what you mean. Mrs. Benoit used to bring pails of water
from her well."

"Very good. And you never heard her incantations, muttering in the
morning before the dew was off the grass, or at night just as the first
beams of the moon, lighted on the topmost boughs of the trees?"

Daisy was confounded. "Mr. McFarlane," she said after a moment's looking
at him--"I hope I do not know what you mean."

At that, Gary McFarlane went off into an ecstacy of laughter, delighted
and amused beyond count. Preston interrupted the sponge cake exercise,
and Daisy felt her sofa shaking with his burden of amusement. What had
she done? Glancing her eye towards Dr. Sandford, who sat near, she saw
that a very decided smile was curling the corners of _his_ mouth. A
flush came up all over Daisy's face; she took some tea, but it did not
taste good any longer.

"What did you think I meant?--come Daisy, tell me," said Gary, returning
to Daisy as soon as he could get over his paroxysm of laughter. "What
did you think I meant? I shouldn't wonder if you had some private
witchcraft of your own. Come! what did you _think_ I meant?"

While he had been laughing, Daisy had been trying to get command of
herself and to get her throat clear for talking; there had been a very
uncomfortable thick feeling in it at first. Now she answered with simple
dignity and soberness,

"I did not know, Mr. McFarlane, but you meant Juanita's prayers."

"Does she pray?" said Gary innocently.

"Yes."

"Long prayers, Daisy?"

"Yes," (unwillingly now.)

"Then that must have been what you heard!" Gary said looking up to
Preston. No answer came from him. Gary was as sober now as seven judges.

"Did she speak her prayers where you could hear her, Daisy?"

"I used to hear her--"

"Mornings and evenings?"

"Yes."

"But you heard her in broad day, Preston?"

"Yes; one afternoon it was. I heard her as soo