The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1897-11-09
TO A BLANK SHEET OF PAPER.
INCA WITCHCRAFT.

Bal Chico was the son of Mexican
matadore, and his early associations
were not Of a kind to develop a stable
and law abiding character. Bal drank
because he saw everybody else drink,
and red wine brought into action in Bal
that courage which the matadore dis
played in the arena with sagacity and
prudence. Red wine does not mature
wisdom, theoretical or applied, and
without these, which are indeed sagac-
ity and prudence, courage becomes but
pugnacity that amuses or offends Bal
soon became offensive, and in brawl
in an indecent quarter Of his native
town he had the misfortune to knife a
young grandee of tastes and weaknesses
similar to his own, but Of influential
connections. The wounded youth recov-
cred, but political influence was sufi-
cient to cause his assailant' s removal to
penal settlement for 30 years.
Bal obtained no more red wine, but
the more he weighed the offense of the
knife attack, its provocation, and its
punishment, the clearer 1t seemed that
he was suffering out of all proportion
to his transgression The sense of foul
wrong, done because it could be done,
burned in upon him as if brand iron
were held against him, ever glowing
and never lifted. For months after he
discerned the immense range Of this in
justice, he lived in rage impedimental
to speeoh-he became inarticulate.
Slowly his good sense came to the
rescue, and he became calm that he
might live grow strong of body and
powerful through accumulation and
meet Don Pico as master. There were
men of different nationalities in the set
Element, and Bal found that he absorbed
words as sponge absorbs water, and
he learned Portuguese, more than one
patois of his own land, and the dialect
of Peruvian Indian sent from his own
province year before, whom he hao
saved from imminent atrocity at the
hands of vicious fellow convict.
This Indian had virtue little known
to civilization-he was capable of graft
tude-and the two formed mutual at
tachment that the friendships of civil
zation may scarcely parallel and which
was equaled but by their common hatred
of all rulers, their own in particular
This Indian Bal knew to be snake
charmer of extraordinary accomplish
ments His gift was not transferable to
the younger man, nor did the latter soon
discover its singularity, but in time he
found that Juan's power over certain
reptiles might be expressed as hypnotic
He seemed to impress his own master
fulness upon the serpents and to exert
his power upon them at distance or to
send them to perform some definite mis-
sion at a distance and return within a
given time, after the habit of human
subjects.
Once Bal saw Juan with his pets at
recreation. No word was spoken, but
Juan looked meaningly at Bal and then
at the top of the wall. Bal looked and
saw lizard there with its head a-tilt
and the sun shining pink through his
palpitant throat Then something slip
ped away from Juan, who watched the
top of the wall, as did Bal By and by
a bit of the wall moved-it seemed q
bit of the wall-it moved and coiled
and leaped, and the little foray was
over. Then the devourer slipped back,
and Juan snapped his fingers and whis-
pered to it.
''Was the lizard hypnotized, too?"
Bal Chico asked himself.
This branch of his accomplishment
Juan never showed the prison officials
when they sent for him to exhibit for
their amusement.
The weary years rolled by. 1--WE will
live; we must live. We will get even
you and me-" Juan whispered to him
self over and over, and he whispered it
to Bal when he could, with the same
imperious suggestiveness that he whis-
pered something to his snakes.
At last Juan's 90 weary years were
done, but the imam WITCH had got
much power. Some he amused when
tired of the commonplace, but the many
feared him, and when he chose to wan
der around the settlement clad in
breeches, a poncho, and viper after
he was free to go far away none OBJ
jected, and few wondered at the whims
of so fantastic being.
When Bal, young man white haired
now, went out, old Juan awaited him
at the prison gates, carrying a close
woven wicker crate, or basket, but nei-
Their extra clothing nor the usual snakes
were visible, and from that day neither
appeared in all that country.
Among the stupendous mountains of
Peru gold may be had for the seeking,
but death is for the white man who
seeks it. When old Juan went back to
his mountains and some old acquaint-
anoes, with another swarthy man who
spoke only as he did and was his friend,
their right of occupancy of hut and
lands was unquestioned, as were their
bartering expeditions to the nearest sea-
port. But Juan and Bal Chico did not
always exchange their nuggets for COM
modities; oftener, with wisdom learn
ed abroad, did they demand coin Juan
had come home with his old name of
Casma, and Bal Chico had assumed
new name for his new habitation, and
the singular fact became known at the