authority. In this
light we may perhaps see the meaning of a sentence, from a work which
will be repeatedly referred to in this narrative, viz.: "This body in
which we journey across the isthmus between the two oceans is not a
private carriage, but an omnibus."

The ancestry of the Withers family had counted a martyr to their faith
before they were known as Puritans. The record was obscure in some
points; but the portrait, marked "Ann Holyoake, burned by ye bloudy
Papists, ano 15.." (figures illegible), was still hanging against the
panel over the fireplace in the west parlor at The Poplars. The
following words were yet legible on the canvas: "Thou hast made a
covenant O Lord with mee and my Children forever."

The story had come down, that Ann Holyoake spoke these words in a prayer
she offered up at the stake, after the fagots were kindled. There had
always been a secret feeling in the family, that none of her descendants
could finally fall from grace, in virtue of this solemn "covenant."

There had been also a legend in the family, that the martyred woman's
spirit exercised a kind of supervision over her descendants; that she
either manifested herself to them, or in some way impressed them, from
time to time; as in the case of the first pilgrim before he cast his lot
with the emigrants,--of one Mrs. Winslow, a descendant in the third
generation, when the Indians were about to attack the settlement where
she lived,--and of another, just before he was killed at Quebec.

There was a remarkable resemblance between the features of Ann Holyoake,
as shown in the portrait, and the miniature likeness of Myrtle's mother.
Myrtle adopted the nearly obsolete superstition more readily on this
account, and loved to cherish the fancy that the guardian spirit which
had watched over her ancestors was often near her, and would be with her
in her time of need.

The wife of Selah Withers was accused of sorcery in the evil days of that
delusion. A careless expression in one of her letters, that "ye Parson
was as lyke to bee in league with ye Divell as anie of em," had got
abroad, and given great offence to godly people. There was no doubt that
some odd "manifestations," as they would be called nowadays, had taken
place in the household when she was a girl, and that she presented many
of the conditions belonging to what are at the present day called
mediums.

Major Gideon Withers, her son, was of the very common type of hearty,