I can tell you what they all mean. That’...

I can tell you what they all mean. That’s a horrible picture, isn’t it? But I can’t help looking at it. That woman in the water is a witch -- well, they’ve put her in to find out whether she’s a witch or not, and if she swims she’s a witch, and if she’s drowned, and killed, you know, she’s innocent and not a witch, just a poor silly woman. But what good would it do her when she was drowned? I suppose she’d go to heaven and God would make it up to her. And this dreadful blacksmith with his arms akimbo, laughing -- he’s ugly, isn’t he? -- I’ll tell you what he is. He’s the devil really. The devil takes the shape of wicked men, mostly blacksmiths because if people saw he was the devil and he roared at them, they’d run away and he couldn’t make ‘em do what he wanted.

Helen Edmundson, The Mill on the Floss, Nick Hern Books, 1994, pp.4.