Two or three others followed with a similar result.  Then came Mercy, the housemaid, and as her trembling fingers poured the liquid forth, behold the powder changed and turned to black!  The commotion was indescribable, and Mercy was about to have a nervous fit when Dr. Rutherford, fixing his eyes on her, said in a tone of command, “Be quiet—­be perfectly quiet, and in two hours I will destroy the spell.  Go over there and sit down.”

She tottered to a seat under one of the trees.

One or two more took their turn, among them Mammy, but the powders remained white.  I had entreated Edward not to pronounce her ’witched, because she was so old and I loved her so:  I could not bear that she should be frightened.  You should have seen her when she found that she was safe.  The stiff old limbs became supple and the terrified countenance full of joy, and the dear ridiculous old thing threw her arms up in the air, and laughed and cried, and shouted, and praised God, and knocked off her turban, and burst open her apron-strings, and refused to be quieted till the doctor ordered her to be removed from the scene of action.  The idea of retiring to the seclusion of her cabin while all this was going on was simply preposterous, and Mammy at once exhibited the soothing effect of the suggestion; so the play proceeded.

More white powders.  Then Apollo’s turned black, and, poor fellow! when it did so, he might have been a god or a demon, or anything else you never saw, for his face looked little like that of a human being, giving you the impression only of wildly-rolling eyeballs, and great white teeth glistening in a ghastly, feeble, almost idiotic grin.

Edward went up to him and laid his hand on his shoulder:  “That’s all right, my boy.  We’ll have you straight in no time, and you will be the best man at the shucking to-morrow night.”

More white powders.  Then came Wash, great big Wash; and when his powder changed, what do you suppose he did?  Well, he just fainted outright.

The remaining powders retaining their color, and Wash having been restored to consciousness, Dr. Rutherford directed him to a clump of chinquapin bushes near the “big gate” at the entrance of the plantation.  There he would find a flat stone.  Beneath this stone he would find thirteen grains of moulding corn and some goat’s hair.  These he was to bring back with him.  Under the first rail near the same gate Mercy would find:  a dead frog with its eyes torn out, and across the road in the hollow of a stump Apollo was to look for a muskrat’s tail and a weasel’s paw.  They went off reluctantly, the entire corps de plantation following, and soon they all came scampering back, trampling down the ox-eyed daisies and jamming each other against the corners of the rail fence, for, sure enough, the witch’s treasures had been found, but not a soul had dared to touch them.  Dr. Rutherford sternly ordered them back, but all hands hung fire, and their