United States or Guinea-Bissau ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
A great many may remember the "Hex" murder case near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1930! This is scarcely different from an incident which had occurred in 1892 in Wemding, Germany: An hysterical woman was "exorcised" by the Capuchin Father Aurelian, who accused a peasant woman of bewitching him.
But for this most providential delay it is probable that the ultimate fighting would have been, not among the mountains and kopjes of Stormberg and Colesberg, but amid those formidable passes which lie in the Hex Valley, immediately to the north of Cape Town, and that the armies of the invader would have been doubled by their kinsmen of the Colony.
The idiot of a Dutchman who had to play the hero's part and save other lives by ending his own made Mirestone fairly sick. However, all was not over. So the Dutchman had died; the hex had worked a lot sooner than he had expected though. Now he certainly would be delayed in his progress, for he had counted on examining the body for any traces left that would suggest something out of the ordinary.
"What are you doing, heh?" Mirestone swung around and glared at the bleary eyed Dutchman. "Sit down," he commanded. "Sit down and watch the feather turn red." Peter didn't need to be told that it was his feather. He knew by the merciless eyes of Mirestone that everything was over. "So, you were determined to find out what would happen if the hex were tried on a man?"
Indeed this inclination was enforced by another reason, that did not fail to influence her conduct in this particular; all her knowledge of the High Dutch language consisted in some words of traffic absolutely necessary for the practice of hex vocation, together with sundry oaths and terms of reproach, that kept her customers in awe; so that, except among her own countrymen, she could not indulge that propensity to conversation, for which she had been remarkable from her earliest years.
Stephen counted out the money grimly, in gold and Boston drafts. Out in the sunlight on Chestnut Street, with the girl by his side, it all seemed a nightmare. The son of Appleton Brice of Boston the owner of a beautiful quadroon girl! And he had bought hex with his last cent. Miss Crane herself opened the door in answer to his ring.
One thing, however, he had learned was that the hex at least worked on humans. The mangled body that was being washed over the rocks would be enough proof on that score. Mirestone poured another drink. He leaned back in the chair and placed the glass to his lips. He was tilted so far back that as he raised the wine to a drinking position, it blocked his view of the room.
Stephen counted out the money grimly, in gold and Boston drafts. Out in the sunlight on Chestnut Street, with the girl by his side, it all seemed a nightmare. The son of Appleton Brice of Boston the owner of a beautiful quadroon girl! And he had bought hex with his last cent. Miss Crane herself opened the door in answer to his ring.
"I am a poor postillion, as you see; yet, as I have seen a thing or two, and heard a thing or two of what is going on in the world, perhaps what I have to tell you connected with myself may not prove altogether uninteresting. Now, my friends, this manner of opening a story is what the man who taught rhetoric would call a hex hex " "Exordium," said I.
'Wall, said he, helping himself to a chew of tobacco, 'we ve tried thet. Gin 'em t'everybody we know but there ain't folks enough' there's such a slew o'them bilers. We could give one if ev'ry man, woman an' child in Faraway an' hex enough left t'fill an acre lot. Dan Perry druv in t'other day with a double buggy. We gin him one fer his own fam'ly.
Word Of The Day