“And I don’t like to think of the man who killed Perdita Pentyre coming to the same conclusion that I have, that Rebecca might have taken shelter with her maid.”

Though it was Abigail’s lifelong contention that in America any woman could travel alone through the countryside without fear of robbery or assault—a situation unthinkable in the Home Country—during the final week of November such a solitary excursion was inadvisable for other reasons. The harsh northeast winds and threat of snow that had made John insist that she take the escort of his clerk likewise precluded shortening the trip to the settlement of Townsend by taking one of her uncle Isaac’s little coastwise trading vessels as far as Salem. Moreover, Thaxter’s mother had kin in western Essex County, and had provided him with clear instructions for getting to Townsend, whence they could inquire for Kemiah Moore’s farm.

From Boston north to Salem the road was well-traveled and reasonably well-kept, along the dunes and salt grass above the pounding gray sea. The public stage had already ceased its journeys for the winter, and the coach from Ports-mouth wasn’t due for another day. An occasional postrider with newspapers or letters overtook their horses, or a city-bound farm-wagon with salt meat and the autumn’s cheeses broke the monotony, but for the most part there were only the brown fields inland to look at, swept by wind sharp as broken oyster shells.

Being related to the Quincys, Thaxter had from childhood absorbed huge quantities of miscellaneous information about other merchant families with which his own uncles and cousins had to do, and proved a ready source of information about Richard Pentyre. “Everybody in town thinks he’s English,” the young man remarked over midmorning bread, cheese, and smuggled tea at the Lion in Lynn. “With those coats he wears, and spending ten pounds on wigs and powder to put on them. But he was born here—in that very house in Prince’s Street where he lives now, for all his parents went back to London when he was but a little tot, and sent him and his brother to Cambridge with all the sons of English lords, and only his bachelor uncle stayed on here. But he’s a Massachusetts man, back four generations on both sides, and his grandfather was one of the preachers who had a hand in hanging witches hereabouts. Bet the Parliament nobs who think he’s so civilized don’t know that one!”