Moreover, once one left the main road, all helpful signposts and milestones ceased. Primordial woods closed around them. The innkeeper in Salem provided an assortment of directions along with more tea, more bread, and more cheese—“You take the Danvers road, m’am, but turn off to your right about two miles past Peabody. You can’t miss the track, for there’s a great oak just a hundred feet down along it, to the left of the way”—but though Abigail jotted what she hoped were the main points on her whale-ivory pocket-tablets, she was disinclined to trust them. “Now, don’t pay no mind to the farm-tracks you’ll pass, but take the bigger way left, after Great Sellars Pond.” “How far?” “Far? Lord, I don’t know—how far would you say it is to the Sellars Pond Road, Jemma?” (This to his wife.) “Two miles?” “Never!—all of four . . .” “Not so far,” protested a one-eyed man at another of the tables near the fire. “Old Sellars used to walk it in half an hour by his watch, and he were a fearful rapid walker. The Sellarses used to have all the land hereabouts, on royal grant. One of ’em married into the Olivers—or was it the Governor’s kin?—that had their holdings all up into Wenham Township and as far as Topsford . . .” “Be sure you don’t take the Topsford Road,” the landlord had agreed. “If you get to the Topsford Farm Road, you’ve gone too far. Old Topsford, he was said to be a warlock, that could raise storms by killing a hare and throwing it in Wenham Pond.”

There followed considerable discussion of whether or not the gentleman in question had actually accomplished this feat of meteorology, but no one present seemed to doubt that he could have, had he wished to do so. Neither could anyone be found headed in that direction, to guide the travelers on their way. It was early yet for dinner, and Abigail elected to press on toward Townsend, a decision she regretted some three hours later, with the threat of rain on the wind, and not the slightest idea of whether the muddy, half-frozen cart-track that disappeared into the fading winter twilight before and behind them was indeed the Topsford Road or some other. She and her companion encountered a number of great oak trees, and several small bodies of water that could have been termed ponds, sloughs, or pools, but few signs of habitation. What they had hoped was a farm-road between rock-walled, stubbled fields petered out and disappeared into woods again. “I think that old deadlight back at Salem witched us,” grumbled Thaxter.