ut back again; and then, to draw it myself.'

At last Madame Phyllis's cup was full, and she fell into the snare
which she had set for others. For a certain coloured policeman went
off to her one night; and having poured out his love-lorn heart, and
the agonies which he endured from the cruelty of a neighbouring
fair, he begged for, got, and paid for a philtre to win her
affections. On which, saying with Danton--'Que mon nom soit fletri,
mais que la patrie soit libre,' he carried the philtre to the
magistrate; laid his information; and Madame Phyllis and her male
accomplice were sent to gaol as rogues and impostors.

Her coloured victims looked on aghast at the audacity of English
lawyers. But when they found that Madame was actually going to
prison, they rose--just as if they had been French Republicans--
deposed their despot after she had been taken prisoner, sacked her
magic castle, and levelled it with the ground. Whether they did, or
did not, find skeletons of children buried under the floor, or what
they found at all, I could not discover; and should be very careful
how I believed any statement about the matter. But what they wanted
specially to find was the skeleton of a certain rival Obeah-man, who
having, some years before, rashly challenged Madame to a trial of
skill, had gone to visit her one night, and never left her cottage
again.

The chief centre of this detestable system is St. Vincent, where--so
I was told by one who knows that island well--some sort of secret
College, or School of the Prophets Diabolic, exists. Its emissaries
spread over the islands, fattening themselves at the expense of
their dupes, and exercising no small political authority, which has
been ere now, and may be again, dangerous to society. In Jamaica, I
was assured by a Nonconformist missionary who had long lived there,
Obeah is by no means on the decrease; and in Hayti it is probably on
the increase, and taking--at least until the fall and death of
Salnave--shapes which, when made public in the civilised world, will
excite more than mere disgust. But of Hayti I shall be silent;
having heard more of the state of society in that unhappy place than
it is prudent, for the sake of the few white residents, to tell at
present.

The same missionary told me that in Sierra Leone, also, Obeah and
poisoning go hand in hand. Arriving home one night, he said, with
two friends, he heard hideous scream