“Yes—that woman forced me to marry her!” he testified in substance. “But in the eyes of God I am not her husband, for she bewitched me! Else would I have married an old crone who could not have borne me children? When her spells weakened I left her and came to America. Here I met the woman I love,—Rosina,—and as I had been bewitched into the other marriage, we lived together as man and wife for two years. Then one day a friend told me that the old woman had followed me over the sea and was going to throw her spells upon me again. But I did not inform Rosina of these things. The next evening she told me that an old woman had been to the house and asked for me. For days my first wife lurked in the neighborhood, beseeching me to come back to her. But I told her that in the eyes of God she was not my wife. Then, in revenge, she cast the evil eye upon the child—_sul bambino_—and for six weeks it ailed and then died. Again the witch asked me to go with her, and again I refused. This time she cast her evil eye upon my wife—and Rosina grew pale and sick and took to her bed. There was only one thing to do, you understand. I resolved to slay her, just as you—_giudici_—would have done. I bought a carving-knife and sharpened it, and asked her to walk with me to the park, and I would have killed her had not the police prevented me. Wherefore, _O giudici!_ I pray you to recall her and permit me to kill her or to decree that she be hung!” This case illustrates the depths of ignorance and superstition that are occasionally to be found among Italian peasant immigrants. Another actual experience may demonstrate the mediæval treachery of which the Sicilian Mafiuso is capable, and how little his manners or ideals have progressed in the last five hundred years or so. A photographer and his wife, both from Palermo, came to New York and rented a comfortable home with which was connected a “studio.” In the course of time a young man—a Mafiuso from Palermo—was engaged as an assistant, and promptly fell in love with the photographer’s wife. She was tired of her husband, and together they plotted the latter’s murder. After various plans had been considered and rejected, they determined on poison, and the assistant procured enough cyanide of mercury to kill a hundred photographers, and turned it over to his mistress to administer to the victim in his “Marsala.” But at the last moment her hand lost its courage and she weakly sewed the poison up for future use inside the ticking of the feather bolster on the marital bed.