"I know not."
"What are his plans?"
"I am wholly ignorant of them."
Next day Charles Stevens was wandering through the forest near the spring where he rescued the wounded stranger some years before. Often had he thought of that melancholy man and the strange resemblance he bore to Cora's father.
"Where is he now, and what has been his fate?" he thought, as he strolled toward the spring. Suddenly he paused and looked toward the brooklet. Well might he be startled. The negro servants, John and Tituba, were engaged in some of their diabolical incantations in the stream. Kneeling by the water's side, each bent until their foreheads touched the water, then, starting up, they murmured strange fetich words in their diabolical African tongue. John had a whip in his hand, with which he lashed the water furiously, and uttered his eldritch shrieks. Charles paused, spell-bound, hardly knowing what to make of the strange conduct of the negroes, and wishing he could lay the whip about their own bare shoulders.
During a lull in their performance, he heard a rapid tread of feet coming toward the spring, and beheld his mother, followed by Cora. No sooner did the negroes see them, than they left off lashing the water with their whips and, with the most wild, unearthly screams, bounded from the spot and ran off into the woods.
Mrs. Stevens and Cora both screamed, and were about to fly, when Charles emerged from his place of concealment, saying:
"Don't run away, I am here."
"Charles! Charles! what were they doing?" Mrs. Stevens asked.
"It was some of their wild incantations," he answered. "The knaves deserve to have a good whip laid about their bare backs."