discourse. Land rights, church conflicts, jealousies—all these petty things one must understand thoroughly if one would understand Salem witchcraft. In his book he would show not only the courage but also the terrors of the early settlers confronted, as they believed, on all sides by the power of Beelzebub. They really thought the Red Men to be devils and the wolves were were-wolves. They themselves were from a little land of hedges, lanes, and small fields, but here was the unutterable weight of endless forest at their backs, and the dark sea beating at their feet. As Lanice wrote, the subject enchanted her. When Captain Poggy was done she could hardly bear to lay her pen down, although her fingers ached.
While engaged in her art lessons with Mrs. Dummer, she thought more often of the witches than of the Biblical scenes growing up about her. Once she painted a convent on Mount Tom, but this she replaced with a gallows. For the shepherds she substituted witch-fire. It would not have occurred to her to paint old Jabez, the actual shepherd of Amherst sheep, who smoked and did not play his pipe.
A month later Lanice received a roundabout response to her letter. Mrs. Andrews, the housekeeper, found her at work by the Chippendale table in the library. She glared at the pale young lady through her rectangular spectacles.
'If I may interrupt, there is a gentleman at the door asking for Miss Bardeen.'
