drinking. He scarcely saw how any man might escape
hell-fire, all being so vile. Against witchcraft and tampering with
Satan's agents he was eloquent. He rode sixty miles in midwinter to see
a Quaker whipped and a woman hung who had been convicted as a witch.

Of all this, his daughter wrote with an elfin mockery. Her brilliant eye
of youth saw through the inconsistency of the beliefs he strove to
reconcile. She learned his lore, read his books, and discarded his
doctrine.

"I study with him, but I think alone," she set down her independence.

Without his knowledge, she proceeded to actual experiment with rude
crucible and alembic in her own chamber. She essayed some age-old
recipes of blended herbs and ingredients within her reach, handled at
certain hours of the night and phases of the moon. All were innocent
enough, it seemed. She cured a beloved old dog of rheumatism and partial
blindness. She discovered an exquisite perfume which she named Rose of
Jerusalem.

But the experiments were not fortunate, she made obscure complaint. The
dog, cured, lived only a few weeks. The perfume, in which she revelled
with a fierce, long-denied appetite, steeping her rich hair in it and
her severely dull garments, awoke many whispers in a community where
sweet odors were unknown and disapproved. She alluded, with a mingling
of freezing scorn and triumph, to the young men who followed after
her--"seeking a wife who would be at their hearth as fatal a guest as
that fair woman sent by an enemy to Alexander the Great, whose honey
breath was deadly poison to who so kissed there."

Into this situation rode the fine gentleman from the colonial world of
fashion who was to fix the fate of Desire Michell and his own.

From this point on, the diary was a record of the same story as the
"History of Ye foule Witch, Desire Michell."

The love affair that followed Sir Austin's visit to the clergyman's
house leaped hot and instant as flame from oil and fire brought
together. The girl was parched with thirst for life, yet despised all
around her. The man was dazzled by a beauty and mentality foreign as a
bird of paradise found nested in Connecticut snow. A mad, wild passion
linked them that was more than half a duel. For Sir Austin was already
betrothed. Honor might not have chained him for long, but his need of
his betrothed's fortune proved more enduring. He was a man bred to
wealth, who did not possess it. He offered Desire Michell his lef