A Cuban planter who suspected one of his older slaves of being an Obeah man determined to punish him if he were found guilty, and to suppress the diabolism attending the midnight meetings. Watching his chance, he followed his slaves into the wood, peeped through the crevices of the deserted hut which they had entered to perform their fantastic rites, saw their mad dance, when, stripped and decorated with beads, shells, and feathers, they leaped about with torches in their hands; then saw his suspected slave enter through a back door, his black skin painted to represent a skeleton. The old man held up a fat toad, which, he said, was his familiar, and the company began to worship it with grotesque and obscene ceremonies. Though he felt a thrill of disgust and even a dim sense of fear at the spectacle, the planter broke in at the door and confronted the Obeah man. Had he ordered the old fellow to do any given task about his house or grounds in the daytime, that order would have been obeyed. What was the planter's astonishment, therefore, when the slave calmly disregarded his command to return to quarters, and bade his master leave the place at once and cease to disturb the meeting, or prepare for a great misfortune. Enraged, and fearing lest this defiance might encourage the other slaves to mutiny, the master shot the old man dead. A few days later the planter's wife died while seated at the table. A week after his daughter died, a seeming victim of poison. All the latent superstition in his nature having been aroused, he sought out another Obeah man, to beg that he would intercede with the powers of darkness, but the wizard was stern. He told him that the slave he had killed was the most powerful master of spirits in the country, and that nothing could stay the revenges of fate. When the planter reached his home he found a letter there announcing the death of his only son in Paris. The Matanzas Obeah Woman