and fear,
but she might be able, through evil arts, to plague the race that
had worked her husband to death in the mines, and now had killed her
only son. She kept still more at home, brooding, planning, yielding
farther and farther to the evil suggestions that her repute as a
voodoo priestess offered to her, yet keeping one place in her heart
even warmer than before,--the place filled by her daughter, Juanita.

This girl of fifteen or sixteen was not black, like her mother. She
was a handsome mulatto. In a country where relations are so easily
established without marriage, and where marriage is so difficult and
has so little force, the fatherhood of many children is in doubt. If
Juanita knew her father's name she was not known to him. It mattered
little. The old woman intended to bring her up as a lady,--that is,
to qualify her for a place as waiting-maid in the house of some
good family; so she made many sacrifices on her account, clothing
her vividly, requiring less work of her than she should have done,
and even, it was said, paying money to have reading taught to her,
and that was an accomplishment, indeed.

Considering the pains and self-denials that the rearing of this child
incurred, it was a trifle inconsistent that Maumee Nina should have
opposed the friendly advances of gallants from the town. She was not
of a class that is wont to consider the etiquette of such attentions,
nor would she have refused to give her daughter in marriage to any
Cuban. It was that her feeling toward the Spaniards was deepening
into hate, and it rejoiced her to learn that a revolution was really
intended. By her native shrewdness she was able to do something for her
people's cause. Whenever a young negro went to her to have his fortune
told,--and from this art she began to realize a steady income,--she
managed to hint at his future greatness as a military leader, his
gains in the loot of Spanish camps, his prowess in bush-fighting when
hostilities should really have begun.

In this way she really incited a number of the ambitious, the
quarrelsome, and the greedy to enlist in the schemes for Cuba's
liberation. Nanigo meetings were held in and near her house; there
were wild dances and uncanny ceremonies, sacrificing of animals in
the moonlight, baptisms of blood, weird chants and responses, and
crime increased in the town. All this being reported to the military
the guard lines were extended and a squadron was posted at a house
n