“No! you ape, unless they mention our island,” replied the woman, her watchful eyes looking curiously at the printed paper that the man held. “About the ships coming and going between the United States and Haiti?” he asked anxiously, as if fearing that he might miss something of importance to the black seeress. “No! That is an old story; the accursed Yankees are ever coming and going, restless fools,” said the woman. “Here is a long account of a grand wedding of a wealthy Haitien that has just taken place in Boston. He married the granddaughter and heiress of J. Dunlap, who is largely interested in our island,” remarked Manuel interrogatively. “His name! fool, his name!” almost screamed the hag, springing to her feet with an agility fearful to contemplate in one so decrepit, suggesting supernatural power to the beholder. Manuel, with trembling lip, cried, as she fastened him in the shoulder with her claws: “Burton! Walter Burton!” Without changing, by even a line her fingers from the place where she had first fixed them in the flesh of the frightened man, she dragged him, bulky as he was, to his feet, and up the steep, pathless hillside with a celerity that was awful to the frightened mulatto. A deep ravine cutting into the back of the hill formed a precipice. Along the face of the rocky wall thus formed a narrow, ill-defined footway ran, almost unsafe for a mountain goat. Nearly a thousand feet below, dark and forbidding in the gloom of jungle and spectral moss-festooned trees, roared the sullen mutterings of a mountain torrent. When near the top of the hill, with a quick whirl the black crone darted aside and around the elbow of the hill, dragging Manuel along at a furious pace, she dashed down the precipitous path with the swiftness and confidence of an Alpine chamois. Half way down the cliff, a ledge of rock made scanty foundation for a hut of roughly hewn saplings, thatched with the palm plants of the ravine below. So scarce was room for the hovel that but one step was necessary to reach the brink of the declivity. As the excited hag reached the aperture that served as the doorway of her den, a hideous, blear-eyed owl, who like an evil spirit kept watch and ward at the witch’s castle, gave forth a ghostly “Hoot! Hoot!” of welcome to his mistress. At the unexpected sound the mulatto’s quivering knees collapsed and he sank down, nearly rolling over the edge of the precipice. Sybella seemed not to feel the weight of the prostrate man whom she still clutched and hauled into the dark interior of her lair. Dropping the almost senseless man, she threw some resinous dry brush upon a fire that was smouldering in the center of the hut. As the flame shot up Manuel opened his eyes. With a shriek he sprang to his feet, terror shaking his every limb as he stared about him.