Jasper County Democrat, Volume 10, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1908 — The Hoodoo Ring. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Hoodoo Ring.

By INA WRIGHT HANSON.

Copyrighted, 1907, by Jessis Morgan.

“Pauline, I love you. Will you marry me or won’t you?” I made my little speech -desperately, with my eyes shut The silence was so long that I opened them to find Pauline with her own eyes shut aud her lips moving rap’ldly, but noiselessly. “What are you doing?” I inquired as calmly as I was able. “I was saying the protection charm for lovers,” she answered, smiling sweetly at me. “It’s lucky for you that you asked me” today. No more lucky days for me till the middle of next month.” “Oh, superstition, thy name is Pauline!” I said fondly. No matter what absurd ideas she had, she was the sweetest girl in the world. “Tomorrow I will bring the diamond,” I added after awhile. “Ob, no, please,” she answered promptly. “1 should rather have a ruby. Rubies exert a special protection in matters of love.” Next day when I entered the only jewelry store the place afforded I was wishing that my Pauline were not so superstitious. Of course 1 wanted her to be pleased, but diamonds seemed to me the only gems for betrothals. When I met her In her garden that night I fancied that she looked pale, and when I gave her the box I thought she seemed on the threshold of tears. “Open it, heart’s dearest,” I allured, not without some trepidation. But she put the box up her lace sleeve and began whispering to me of how she w-as ever prone to hold her pleasures a little while from her until she had tasted anticipation to the full, and she was so wonderfully entrancing that no mortal man could remember such mundane things as metal or brilliants in the soft symphonies of her feeling-swept voice. But there was a change in my sweetheart after that. v I had sometimes chafed over the necessity, when we were starting for somewhere and had only a brief time to get there in and had forgotten something, of being compelled, when we returned for it, to sit down till we had counted fifty, but this Pauline always laughingly Insisted on. Now she treated all signs seriously. She no longer laughed when we spilled

the salt. She looked at me with fear in her eyes as she threw a pinch of it into the fire. She sometimes cried when I left her, as though my absence were to be an Indefinite thing instead of a time of hours, and when I came to her she often rejoiced, as though I were come from a far country, and through Ml these days she refused to wear my ring. One night I spoke sharply to her. “Pauline, take my ring from your sleeve, or the corner of your handkerchief, or your pompadour, or wherever you have concealed it, and put it in its rightful place,” I Insisted. “It’s in the house,” she faltered, looking at me With frightened eyes. “I’ll get it.” Returning, she placed the red leather box on the arbor table, and with her face wreathed in tragedy she began ts talk. “I looked at the rings in that store before you went in to get it There was only one ruby, as yon know, and I thought it beautiful, beautiful! I had told the man when I went In that 1 wasn’t going to buy, so he began to talk to me. He said he called the ruby his ‘hoodoo ring.’ He said a young man bought it first for his girl, but she jilted him before she ever saw the ring, so he brought it back, exchanging it for a diamond scarfpin. Then a man bought it for his daughter’s gift sbe. died, the week before, and he sold it for money to buy the poor child’s shroud. Wasn’t It dreadful, Harry? Then a mysterious veiled lady said she was going to buy it, but she'Suddenly disappeared and was never heard of after. "I went home in a dreadful state of mind. All day I was sending the mental suggestion to you not to buy that ring, but just before closing time I sneaked ip to look, and the ruby was

gone- i could not bring myself to tell you then that I didn't want it after you had been good enough to please me, for I knew you preferred a diamond, so I said I would forget its history. I compromised with evil and took, ft, but I have never opened the box." “You haven’t looked at the ring?” I exclaimed. “No. But just having it in my possession has done such awful things! First my poor kitten ate the poisoned meat, then my best loved vase fell to the floor when no one was near It and broke itself to pieces, I tore my best dress the first time I wore it, and you had the automobile accident.” “But I didn’t get hurt,” I objected. “Yes, but it’s a warning!” she walled. “I don’t want the ring, and I don’t want you to keep it, and it is a shame to make that poor man take it back. Let’s bury it somewhere, and you needn’t get me another. I will -be satisfied without an engagement ring.” Then I laughed. I couldn’t restrain myself any longer, and my poor girl’s wet eyes looked at me reproachfully. I picked up the box and touched the spring. She gave one long, earnest look at the sparkler, then looked wildly at me. “Why, It’s a diamond!” I nodded. I could do no more then. “Is that the ring I have been carrying around or hiding away for two mortal weeks?” I nodded again, helpless with laughter, and it was not long till Pauline laughed with me. Then she kissed the ring and slipped it on her finger. Next she went to the door of the arbor and looked deliberately at the moon over her left shoulder. Spying a ladder leaning against the wall, she walked under it. A rusty nail showed enticingly in the moonlight, but she did not turn it around. She came back to me, sat down and regarded me gravely. “I still have an unholy curiosity to know who did buy that ring and what it did to them ?” she said mournfully. “Oh, heart of mine,” I crooned, “can it be that you have lived for a whole summer in this place and. have yet to learn that that jewelry man fe known hereabout as Ananias Jones, although he was christened Henry? He just dotes on talking to pretty girls, and he has quite a genius for story telling. Figuratively speaking, my beloved, he sold you a gold brick.” Pauline sighed and removed her shoes. She placed the high heeled, absurd little articles on the table, regarding .them seriously. Then she put them on again, being careful to dress the left foot first “There! That’s the very worst one of them all,” she said in the tone the great man must have used when he had conquered his last world and there were no more of them. “There’s a worse onel” I cried in so mighty a voice that Pauline jumped. “Today week is Friday, the 13th. You wouldn’t dare let it be our wedding day?” I knew it was an unfair advantage, and I was about to take it all back when my blessed girl snuggled herself into my delighted arms. “I might dare, Harry,’* she whispered, “but wouldn’t you as lief It would be a day sooner?”

SPYING A LADDER LEANING AGAINST THE WALL, SHE WALKED UNDER IT.