will declare that the spirit of a sick person has
strayed from the body, and means will be set on foot to secure its
return. A woman I know, whose boy had apparently died from typhoid
fever, was told that his spirit had been enticed away by a god whose
shrine was built on the mountain side near the city where she lived. She
took the child's coat and walked to the temple; here, standing before
the idol, she burned incense and begged that the boy's spirit might be
restored to her. Holding the child's coat open to receive it, she swayed
to and fro, and with heart-rending cries besought it to return. She
waited until she felt her request had been granted, and with a movement
as though to enfold the little wandering ghost, she clasped the coat in
her arms and swiftly returning home, laid it upon the lifeless body. The
child revived, and is alive to this day.

Frequently, after supplication to the gods, the clothes of the patient
are carefully weighed; a procession is then formed in which one of the
sorcerers holds a mirror directed backwards, others, wearing scarlet
aprons, carry brooms and with slow and mystic movements sweep widely on
either side with the intent of gathering up the wandering soul.
Meanwhile crackers are fired to the weird sound of a minor, falsetto
lilting. After a considerable journey over the countryside they return
to prove the success of their venture. For this the clothes of the sick
man must be reweighed to see whether the weight of the spirit has been
added to that of the patient's garments. Should the smallest discrepancy
be detected all is well, and after feasting and opium the _mo-han_
pockets his fee and departs, frequently leaving a prescription behind
him, the results of which may be more or less harmful. Whatever the
result, nothing will shake the faith of the people in these degraded
villains, for they can, by threatening to call in the intervention of
the gods on their behalf strike terror to the heart of any man, and once
having sought aid of the sorcerer, the family is pitiable indeed.

In a case which came under my personal observation, the spirit of a
young woman from a village at some distance from the one in which I was
staying, who had recently died in childbirth, was said to have returned,
having found herself in difficulties in the spirit world for lack of
means to defray the necessary expenses. Illness became so prevalent that
necromancers were called in and agreed that a medium m