There was
a forest in her own country. The devil taught her Witchcraft in the
forest. The serpents and the wild beasts were afraid to touch her.
She lived without eating. She was sold for a slave, and sent to the
island--an island in the West Indies. An old man lived there; the
wickedest man of them all. He filled the black Witch with devilish
knowledge. She learned to make the image of wax. The image of wax casts
spells. You put pins in the image of wax. At every pin you put, the
person under the spell gets nearer and nearer to death. There was a poor
black in the island. He offended the Witch. She made his image in wax;
she cast spells on him. He couldn't sleep; he couldn't eat; he was such
a coward that common noises frightened him. Like Me! Oh, God, like me!"

"Wait a little," Alban interposed. "You are exciting yourself
again--wait."

"You're wrong, sir! You think it ended when she finished her story, and
shut up her book; there's worse to come than anything you've heard yet.
I don't know what I did to offend her. She looked at me and spoke to me,
as if I was the dirt under her feet. 'If you're too stupid to understand
what I have been reading,' she says, 'get up and go to the glass. Look
at yourself, and remember what happened to the slave who was under the
spell. You're getting paler and paler, and thinner and thinner; you're
pining away just as he did. Shall I tell you why?' She snatched off the
shade from the lamp, and put her hand under the table, and brought out
an image of wax. _My_ image! She pointed to three pins in it. 'One,'
she says, 'for no sleep. One for no appetite. One for broken nerves.' I
asked her what I had done to make such a bitter enemy of her. She says,
'Remember what I asked of you when we talked of your being my servant.
Choose which you will do? Die by inches' (I swear she said it as I hope
to be saved); 'die by inches, or tell me--'"

There--in the full frenzy of the agitation that possessed her--there,
Mrs. Ellmother suddenly stopped.

Alban's first impression was that she might have fainted. He looked
closer, and could just see her shadowy figure still seated in the chair.
He asked if she was ill. No.

"Then why don't you go on?"

"I have done," she answered.

"Do you think you can put me off," he rejoined sternly, "with such an
excuse as that? What did Miss de Sor ask you to tell her? You promised
to trust me. Be as good as your word."

In the days of her health and strength