Mary had paused and asked the question to draw out the odd character for her friend.
"In the woods the clocks of heaven strike 11! Jeffers, who was never born, speaks out," was the strange reply.
"In the woods," said Mary, thoughtfully, "the dew drips tinkling from the leaves; Jeffers, the redbird, was never born, but hatched. What does he say, Aunt Sylla?" The woman was trying to light her pipe. Absence of tobacco was the main cause of her failure. Edward crushed a cigar and handed it to her. When she had lighted it she lifted the blazing chunk and her faded eyes looked steadily upon the young man.
"He says the gentleman will come some day and bring much tobacco." The girl laughed, but the darkness hid her blushes.
"In the meantime," said Edward cheerfully, placing a silver coin in her hand, "you can tell your friend Jeffers that you are supplied."
The negro's prophecy is usually based on shrewd guesses. Sylla grasped the coin with the eagerness of a child receiving a new doll. She pointed her finger at him and looked to the girl. Mary laughed.
"Keep still a moment, Mr. Morgan," she said, "I must rob you."
She took a strand or two of his hair between her little fingers and plucked them out. Edward would not have flinched had there been fifty. "Now something you have worn--what can it be? Oh, a button." She took his penknife and cut from his coat sleeve one of its buttons. "There, Aunt Sylla, if you are not successful with them I shall never forgive you." The old woman took the hair and the button and relapsed into silent smoking.
"I am a little curious to know what she is going to do with those things," said Edward. Mary looked at him shyly.
"She is going to protect you," she said. "She will mix a little ground glass and a drop of chicken blood with them, and sew all in a tiny bag. No negro alive or dead would touch you then for the universe, and should you touch one of them with that charm it would give them catalepsy. You will get it to-morrow."
"She is arming me with a terrible power at small cost," he replied, dryly.
"Old Sylla is a prophetess," said the girl, "as well as a voodoo, and there is with us a tradition that death in the family will follow her every visit to the house. It is strange, but within our memory it has proved true. My infant brother, my only sister, mamma's brother, papa's sister, an invalid northern cousin spending the winter here--all their deaths were preceded by the appearance of old Sylla."