No less than eight distinct personalities are said to have coexisted in a single female mentioned by an ancient physician of unimpeachable 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.