Mystery on Graveyard Head. Edith Dorian
berrying when it hadn’t rained all summer and half the wells were dry, but the Witch was flowing the same as ever. She’s over here.” He led the way toward a green thicket a dozen yards further. “The springhouse tumbled down years ago though. You’ll have to build that over again.”
Trailing along after them, Linda listened interestedly. What she wanted to have accounted for was that name. “Would somebody please stop just long enough to tell me why it’s called the ‘Witch Spring’?” she asked.
“Because the Farrs were smart enough to have a witch in their family,” Mrs. Purchas said, smiling. “She tapped the ground one day and created it. At least, that’s the way the story goes. Before that, the Farrs had a dug well and it was always running dry like everybody else’s.”
They stood awhile watching the water flow steadily over the worn silvery stones, and Linda’s eyes grew dreamy. “Perhaps she’s still lurking around her spring, Dr. Sutton,” she said. “Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll see her riding her broomstick across the face of the moon with her nose in a big shadowy hook and her white hair flying.”
“Then she won’t be our witch, and I’ll have to chase her for trespassing,” the doctor protested. “There was nothing toothless and scraggly about the Farr witch, I’ll have you know! Ours was nineteen and redheaded.”
“A disturbin’ woman,” Waity added promptly. “That’s what my great-great-grandfather called her in his diary. Loraney, her name was. She was living on Bailey Island yonder, time she married Shubael Farr.”
He pointed at the rocky shore across Merriconeag Sound, but Linda was paying no attention.
“Why, I’ve just seen her back there at the house,” she cried. “No wonder she didn’t look as tame as I do.”
At Dr. Sutton’s startled expression, Steve couldn’t keep his face straight, and Linda chuckled.
“Her picture’s hanging in the hall,” she explained. “She’s absolutely gorgeous. I can understand Shubael all right, but what made a witch decide to capture him, Dr. Sutton? Was he supposed to be fabulous?”
“Girl in every port, according to the family stories,” the doctor assured her, “but frankly I suspect Shubael was a man of business. I have his old account books, and for a whole year he’d entered regular payments to Loraney opposite the notation ‘spells for favorable winds.’ Perhaps he decided it would be more economical to marry his witch. Then fixing up fair winds for his voyages would fall under the head of ‘wifely duties.’ ”
But Linda refused to listen. “I don’t believe it,” she announced indignantly. “Loraney bewitched Shubael for some good reason of her own. She brewed brews and mixed potions.”
“Strawberry hair likely was enough brew,” Waity said drily. “It beats all how unsettled most men can get when a redheaded woman crosses their bow.”
Dr. Sutton laughed. “As long as she fixed up this spring for me, I don’t mind how unsettled Shubael managed to get. Anyhow, poor Loraney’s spells must have failed her. The first voyage she and Shubael sailed together, neither they nor their ship came back.”
The general conversation turned to practical details of piping water into the Farr house, and Steve pulled Linda aside. “Loraney’s headstone’s down near the shore with the others,” he said, and she fell hastily into step at his side.
“What’s her headstone doing there, though, if she was lost at sea?” she demanded.
“Families put them up anyway,” Steve explained. “After a ship was so long overdue they had to give up hope, they ordered a headstone with ‘Lost at Sea’ on it. There are plenty of that kind with nobody under them on Graveyard Head. The Farrs were all sailors—fishermen and whalers and clipper-ship men.”
He pushed tangle after tangle of myrtle and wild grape aside, hunting until he found the stone that he wanted. “Here it is,” he said, LORANEY. WIFE OF SHUBAEL FARR. LOST AT SEA 1798. AGED 19. The minister’s supposed to have come galloping right down here to order the witch’s stone pulled out, but it didn’t get him anywhere. The Farrs just said they put headstones up for Farrs regardless, and that was that—except they didn’t go to Meeting for quite a spell!”
Linda looked around her. At her feet slept generations of seafaring men and women. Behind her, the lilacs they had planted guarded the old wall, built stone upon stone from their rocky acres. Before her, the Bay they loved slapped little waves against ledges they had climbed.
She turned eagerly to Steve. “I hope Dr. Sutton clears away the weeds and tangles. I want the stones to be visible again so sailors on the Sound nowadays can know how much the Farrs loved the sea.”
Steve looked down at her in surprise. He had not expected her to understand why the Farrs lay sleeping as close to the Bay as they could get. “We’ll work on Dr. Sutton,” he said. “Just lilacs and flowers aren’t enough for seafaring people like them.”
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