But by daybreak ’Liza had made up her mind, and Bithie, pale and ashen, bound a plantain leaf to her own forehead and chanted a death song from her cabin.
All day Ole Miss waited for Bithie, but Bithie had forgotten the world. In vain old Maumer anointed her with salves to break the spell of frenzy, still the death chant wailed from the cabin, and Bithie would not be comforted.
The plantation thrilled with the news of ’Liza’s coming marriage to the hoodoo, who was old enough to be her grandfather. The gossips wagged it, and the old men smoked it in their pipes. Even the pickaninnies drew it into their play, and sang, with a newly invented shuffle:
“Lawsy mussy, what ’Liza hab done,
Maired de ole man instid uv he son.”
And Unc’ Caspar, leaning on his stick, hastened ’Liza for the wedding, and for bridal trickery bored the pearly shells of the river mussel and strung them on his beard; and every night, to make ’Liza surer in her mind, he would make the mist to rise and show her the treasures that were to be hers on her wedding-day.
By-and-by, under the spell that Unc’ Caspar wrought, Bithie ceased from the death song, and, rising from her bed, she stole from Ole Miss’s armoire a bolt of sheeny satin to make into a wonderful gown for ’Liza, and Unc’ Caspar bored shells again, and Bithie sat up all night to border the hem of ’Liza’s wedding-dress with them.
These days Unc’ Caspar was busy too, for down in the swamp-willows Amaziah lay in a trance, and no one came to help him. He was to lie in the trance until after the wedding, when the hoodoo dance would waken him; and so Unc’ Caspar cut down with his charms everything that might come between him and ’Liza.