s of blood. There is a three-footed horse, also, that gallops
about the country roads when it has come freshly out of hell and is
looking for victims it can eat. If it halts before a house, that stop
means death to somebody within, and the peculiar sound made by its
three hoofs tells what has passed. It is not well to look, because
the creature has an eye in the centre of its forehead that flashes
fire. One who meets it is so fascinated by this blazing eye that he
cannot look away. He stares and stares; presently paralysis creeps over
him, and in a little while he falls dead. Sometimes a creature is seen
riding on this horse,--a man with a blue face, like that of a corpse,
and with that face turned toward the tail. Related, in tradition,
to the horse was the king-snake of Carib myth, a frightful creature
that wore a brilliant stone in its head, which it usually concealed
with a lid, like that of the eye, but which it would uncover when it
went to a river to drink, or played about the hills. Whoever looked
on this dazzling stone would lose his sight on the instant.

The Obeah man has an hereditary power that comes to him in advanced
age, and that, when at its strongest, enables him to send an evil
spirit into any object he pleases. Not only do the people believe in
him, but he has the fullest faith in himself. When he boils a witch
broth of scorpions' blood, toads' heads, snake bellies, spider poison,
and certain herbs picked by moonlight (an actual mixture used by
Obeah witches),--boils it over a fire of dead men's bones, between
midnight and dawn,--he has no more doubt of its power to harm than
the physician doubts the power of his quinine and antipyrin for good.

A Cuban planter who suspected one of his older slaves of being an Obeah
man determined to punish him if he were found guilty, and to suppress
the diabolism attending the midnight meetings. Watching his chance,
he followed his slaves into the wood, peeped through the crevices of
the deserted hut which they had entered to perform their fantastic
rites, saw their mad dance, when, stripped and decorated with beads,
shells, and feathers, they leaped about with torches in their hands;
then saw his suspected slave enter through a back door, his black skin
painted to represent a skeleton. The old man held up a fat toad, which,
he said, was his familiar, and the company began to worship it with
grotesque and obscene ceremonies. Though he felt a thrill of disgust
and