"Ha, ha!" laughed Wang Ken, "I don't wonder that you call that a
strange-looking tree. Let's take a walk up to it and get a closer view."

So the ponies were halted, and down sprang Yung Pak and Wang Ken.
Leaving the ponies in charge of the _mapus_, they marched up the hill to
get a nearer sight of the tree.

"Why," said the boy, as they approached it, "those are not leaves that
we saw from the road, but they are rags and strips of cloth. It looks as
if some one had hung out their clothes to dry and forgotten to take them
in again. What does it all mean?"

"That tree, my boy," Wang Ken replied, "is called the sacred devil-tree.
That is a queer combination of names, but you know there are a lot of
ignorant people in our country who are very superstitious. They believe
in all sorts of evil and good spirits. They think these spirits watch
every act of their lives. Consequently they do all they can to please
the good spirits and to drive away the evil ones. This tree they believe
has power to keep off the bad spirits, so every man who thinks that a
demon has possession of him tears a piece of cloth from his garment and
carefully ties it to a branch. That is how all these strips you see come
to be hanging above you. Some have hung there so long that the wind and
rain have torn them to rags."

"Yes, but why is this done?" asked Yung Pak.

"Because," was the reply, "a man who is possessed by an evil spirit
thinks that by thus tying a part of his clothing to the tree he may
induce the spirit to attach himself to it instead of to his own person."