On the night that Dictator Dupree entertained, among other guests the wealthy Haitian, Walter Burton, partner in the great American house of “J. Dunlap,” and husband of the heiress to the millions accumulated by the long line of “J. Dunlaps” which had controlled the Haitian trade with the United States, a strange and uncanny drama was enacted almost within sound of the music that enlivened the Dictator’s banquet. Through trees entwined by gigantic vines, resembling monstrous writhing serpents, glided silently many dark forms carrying blazing torches of resinous wood to guide the flitting figures through the intricacies of the hardly definable pathways that ran in serpentine indistinctness toward the clear spot, where Mother Sybella had set up the altar of Tu Konk, and was calling her children to worship by the booming of an immense red drum upon which she beat at short intervals. In the center of the clearing, coiled upon the stump of a large tree, was a huge black snake, that occasionally reared its head and, waving it from side to side, emitted a fearful hissing sound as it shot forth its scarlet, flame-like tongue. Torches and bonfires illuminated the spot and cast gleams of light upon the dark faces and distended, white and rolling eyes of the men and women who, squatting in a circle back in the shade of the underbrush, chanted a monotonous dirge-like invocation to the Voo Doo divinity called by them Tu Konk, and supposed to dwell in the loathsome body of the serpent on the stump. By almost imperceptible degrees the blows upon the drum increased in frequency; old Sybella seemed some tireless fiend incarnate as gradually she animated the multitude and quickened the growing excitement of her emotional listeners by the ceaseless booming of her improved tom-tom. Soon the forest began to resound with hollow bellowing of conch shells carried by many of the squatters about the circle. The chant became quicker. Shouting took the place of the droning monotonous incantations to Tu Konk. Higher and higher grew the gale of excitement. The shouting grew in volume and intensity. Wild whoops mingled with the more sonorous shouts that made the forest reverberate. Suddenly the half-clad figure of a man sprang into the circle of light that girded the stump whereon the now irritated snake was hissing continuously. The man was bare to the waist and without covering on his legs and feet below the knees; his eyes glared about him, the revolving white balls in their ebony colored setting was something terrifying to behold. The man uttered whoop after whoop and began shuffling sideways around the stump, every moment adding to the rapidity and violence of his motions until shortly he was madly bounding into the air and with savage shouts tearing at the wool on his head, while white foam flecked his bare black breast.