But elvin phantoms cursed the dell And sylvan witches all unseen Wielded scepter o'er this queen." The woodcut accompanying this bit of doggerel in a book written some years later does not flatter Miss Betsy. She resembles a witch herself, with her hair in wild disarray and her hands raised in horror. If she had been a lady of high degree in old Scotland (a region much afflicted with witchcraft, it seems), some Highland minstrel might have immortalized her sufferings in better verse, and a handsomer portrait might have been painted. But perhaps she was better off as she was. In a less enlightened age she might have been condemned for witchcraft, or sent some other poor wretch to a grisly death. I told you Betsy was the heroine of this tale of Gothic horror, and I stick to that opinion, even though the Spirit itself is the major character. A good many clues suggest that it was of the female gender, but it is hard to ascribe sexual identity to a disembodied voice, and we cannot call the Spirit a heroine unless we are willing to apply the same term to characters like Medea and Messalina.
