110 



DREADFUL CONSEQUENCES OF 



were not consulted, for they had no consent to give or withhold; 

 such things being always managed for them by their parents. But 

 sometime afterwards Aberan Appoo, a maternal uncle of the girl, 

 and a man who was most scrupulously punctilious in matters of 

 family pedigrees, returned from Saffragam where he had been 

 trading for 4 or 5 months, and now for the first time hearing of the 

 intended marriage determined to frustrate it, because he found a 

 flaw in the pedigree of Harmanis Appoo, viz., that the father of 

 his grandmother had been married to the descendant of a bastard 

 slave. This in Aberan Appoo's opinion was an insuperable obsta- 

 cle to the marriage, and so he set himself to work upon the family 

 pride of his brother-in-law and his sister, in which he succeeded so 

 well, that the, match was soon broken off, and all intercourse between 

 the two families ceased. Harmanis Appoo taking this as a mortal 

 and unpardonable affront resolved to have his revenge. So he went 

 to a Cattadiya in the Southern Province, and got him to prepare a 

 Hooniyan charm against the young woman, and returning home, 

 quietly waited for the result, of which he had not the slightest 

 doubt. Curiously enough, just two months after this, the young 

 woman died from the effects of a fever, which she had contracted 

 through exposure to bad weather. Old Harmanis chuckling at 

 this and too vain to hold his tongue confided to one or two of his 

 confidential friends, how he had taken his revenge on Hendrick. 

 Hendrick himself had heard before this of the other's visit to the 

 Southern Province, but had never learned the purpose of the jour- 

 ney. As usual with prudent parents especially when a marriage 

 proposal breaks off, he had taken every possible precaution, by 

 means of charms and other amulets, to secure his daughter from 

 the dangers arising from Hooniyan and other demon- influences; 

 but when he heard, the day after the funeral of his child, of what 

 Harmanis had been boasting privately to his friends, it confirmed 

 him in his previous suspicions, and roused all the evil nature in 

 him. These suspicions were still further confirmed by the disco- 

 very of a small wooden image buried under one of the front steps 

 of his Verandah, So, a few days afterwards, he and his three sons 



