Patti, the title of the book is "Day of the Arrow" and the author is Philip Loraine (please note this is the
exact spelling of the author's name).
My library's online catalogue listed about a dozen titles by Philip Loraine among their holdings, including such salacious titles as "A Mafia Kiss" and "Ugly Money." When I was looking up the book in out-of-print listings, one resource stated that "Philip Loraine" was a pseudonym of "Robin Estridge" (who is credited with the screenplay for "Eye of the Devil.") If that's true, I'm surprised my library did not show that information, as I've seen them do so with other writers using pseudonyms.
I'm anxious to read beyond the first chapter, but now I've also gotten the playscript for "The Innocents," and a couple of Harry Potter books to catch up on ...
BTW, this may not be necessary, but I do apologize to any fans of Victoria Holt out there -- I've never read any of her books, so who am I to judge? If she writes things reminiscent of "Eye of the Devil," maybe I should check her out!
Also, when I mentioned something about "our" pre-Christian ancestors, I was writing quickly and didn't take time to reconsider the phrase, since some of us may be of Jewish heritage or any number of traditions. Hope this didn't offend anyone.
And a further comment on my comment ... although it is popularly thought that the Christians alone brought the practice of witchcraft into disrepute, some of my reading on Scandinavia showed that malevolent witchcraft was much feared even in pagan, pre-Christian times, and people may have been burned for it even before Christianity. (In certain Scandinavian countries where Christianity arrived late, this would have been in the early Middle Ages).