“Missus,” said the cultivator solemnly, “we sorry for him. Can't blame Daniel Cooper. Him can't help it. Him put so. When I go to Cuba him good boy”—the gentleman was over forty even then—“an' when I come back dat Charles Henry put him so. Dat bad man Charles Henry. Make him tief, make him lie, put him so.”
So Daniel Cooper, idle scamp, for some unknown reason is to be pitied not blamed, because it is a well-known fact that Charles Henry is an Obeah man.
Obeah is a very real and live thing in the mountains round Montego Bay. But Miss Maxwell Hall has decreed that the gentleman who has been “put so,” whether he is to be pitied or blamed, shall not come on her land. She will not encourage Obeah.
There was another case, a well-known case some years ago. A woman with two sons got leave to take up land on Kempshot. She put the boys to clear it, and as they worked a man came and said she could not have it. Her husband, who was dead, owed him twenty pounds, and he was taking the land instead. Everyone knew it was a lie, he never had twenty pounds to lend anybody. But as the boys worked he warned them.
“You come back after dinner, see what happen to you.”
But they laughed and came back.
“You no come to-morrow,” threatened the man, and sure enough next day both boys were ill, and while one died the other has been an idiot ever since.
Again, some years ago, a maid-servant refused the advances of a man she disliked. He threatened her.
“You no come to me I put you so.”
But she laughed and tossed her head. And that night she was taken with terrible pains that threatened to crush the life out of her. The doctor was sent for, an English physician. He said he thought the girl had been poisoned, but the case baffled him. No remedy that he could think of had any effect, and he thought she must die.