The Argosy, Vol. 81, No. 4 — page 101: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

FOOLS OF SACRIFICE. wide in a grisly smile, showing flawless rows of big white teeth. She knelt down, turned the boy over on his back and began to stroke his face and throat, always droning her mystic croon. Soon the quivering of his body ceased and with shut eyes he lay in trance-like quiet. “Son,” she asked in her heavy singsong tone, ‘“who has been putting evil on you?”’ Thrice she repeated the question before Jolly George opened his eyes and replied hoarsely: “Tt’s the death-touch!”’ He caught at her yellow sleeve tremulously. “Who gave it to you, son?” “The villain dead man on the beach.”’ “Where?” : “Here on my right foot.”” The boy sat up and pointed to the inner side of his foot. “It burns sometimes and sometimes it’s cold—ugh!”’ He clutched Mother Juliet’s hand, plead- ing: “Charm it away! Charm it away quick!” The woman pulled her hands free and reaching into a pocket at the side of her skirt as she stood up, produced a round china box, almost transparently white. The box bore no mark. It was half an inch in height perhaps and about two inches in diameter. “Right now you put this charm in your pocket, son, and never dare to open it or the charm will go away as soon as air touches it,” she adjured the boy in a solemn tone. — “No light must see it and you must never look at it. It’s my own charm and I would not leave it go from me except I mean to take the death-touch from you before it’s too late.” - Eying the seeress with devotional awe, Jolly George immediately put the little box in his trousers’ pocket, responding: “Tt bet I do what you say, Mother Juliet, and never nothing different.” “Now wait here till I come,” the woman ordered as she turned away to re-enter her hut. Jolly George would have sung the little song about himself to cheer his soul, but he could not. He only whistled the air plaintively while he watched Mother Juliet’s door to see what new kind of terror or of solace she was preparing for him. She came forth, brisk of step, carrying a great sun-umbrella, which she did not attempt to open until she and Jolly George 667 were outside the thick growth of trees that was her sanctuary. } First she pointed with it to a square pedestal of coral polished like marble, that was almost hidden in the ferns and grass near the spot where the path to her hut began. From a copper bracket fastened to the pedestal with a band of the same metal hung a small ship’s bell. “You see that bell,’ Mother Juliet said sternly, “and you knew it was there.” “Yes; I knew it was there, I bet,” the boy stammered. ‘Don’t you never come for me again unless you ring that bell and stay waiting here, and don’t forget. If I am out and away looking about my work, why you jess leave something on the stone I can tell is from you..Then you visit me again after a while, Son George.” ‘““There’s two dead pigeons on the stone now,” the boy remarked, as if willing to divert the talk from himself. “Have I not eyes as well as, you and that can see things you shall never see?” the woman inquired sarcastically. “You have, I bet,” the boy replied timor- ously. “I only jess happened to notice the pigeons.” With a slow crooning song, rising and falling in monotonous turn, the seeress gave her sun-umbrella to Jolly George and bade him keep his back toward her. This he did only too gladly. “You little birds is cold dead,’’ Mother Juliet mumbled under her breath as she stopped her crooning when she had thor- oughly examined them. ‘Your legs is cut off and that tells me who will be here to- night. You jess lay here like this, bill to bill, an’ (ll make quick haste to return and warm your tiny hearts.” Replacing the dead pigeons on the pedes- tal, Mother Juliet turned sharply toward Jolly George, saying: “You see, son, how I must always be studying and working. Open my umbrella and hurry away with me now.” Trembling, the boy opened it, showing the inside a brilliant green, the outside an equally brilliant yellow. “Now you jess take and show me that dead man on the beach,” said Mother Juliet. “No, no! him again!” Mother Juliet tugged at the boy’s arm and started him. I can’t! I can’t durst go near 0)(0) COWMUC CS (C@