"Oh, Scipio!" Miss Marty's two hands went up in horrified dismay.
"How could you be so careless!"
"The Millennium, miss!"
"We can never replace it--never!"
Scipio gazed at the tray: but what he saw was a shattered dream--a
cracked board strewn with fragmentary scarlet letters and flourishes,
"brief flourishes."--"Ole man Satan is among us sho 'nuff, Miss
Marty: among us and kickin' up Saint's Delight, because his time is
short. I was jes' thinkin' of the widows, miss."
"You have spoilt the set . . . eh? _what_ widows? You don't mean to
tell me that Satan--?"
Miss Marty broke off and gazed at Scipio with dawning suspicion,
distrust, apprehension. She had never completely reconciled herself
with the poor fellow's colour. The Major, in moments of irritation,
would address him as "You black limb of Satan." He came from the
Gold Coast, and she had heard strange stories of that happily
distant, undesirable shore; stories of devil-worship, and--was it
there they practised suttee? What did he mean by that allusion to
widows? And why had he turned pale--yes, pale--when she announced
the Evil One's approaching overthrow?
Miss Marty left him to pick up the pieces, and withdrew in some haste
to the kitchen. Then, half an hour later, while rolling out the
paste for a pie-crust, she imparted the news to Lavinia.
"It's to happen on May-day, Lavinia. The Major had word of it this
morning, and--only think!--Satan is to be bound for a thousand
years.
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