sound of a warrant and a constable, ran away, and was not heard of
for a fortnight.

At the end of that time he was discovered, and brought to the bench; and
Dame Weston again told her story, and, as before, on the full cry.
She had no witnesses, and the bruises of which she made complaint had
disappeared, and there were no women present to make common cause with
the sex. Still, however, the general feeling was against Master Weston;
and it would have gone hard with him when he was called in, if a most
unexpected witness had not risen up in his favour. His wife had brought
in her arms a little girl about eighteen months old, partly perhaps to
move compassion in her favour; for a woman with a child in her arms is
always an object that excites kind feelings. The little girl had looked
shy and frightened, and had been as quiet as a lamb during her mother's
examination; but she no sooner saw her father, from whom she had been a
fortnight separated, than she clapped her hands, and laughed, and cried,
'Daddy! daddy!' and sprang into his arms, and hung round his neck,
and covered him with kisses--again shouting, 'Daddy, come home! daddy!
daddy!'--and finally nestled her little head in his bosom, with a
fulness of contentment, an assurance of tenderness and protection such
as no wife-beating tyrant ever did inspire, or ever could inspire, since
the days of King Solomon. Our magistrates acted in the very spirit of
the Jewish monarch: they accepted the evidence of nature, and dismissed
the complaint. And subsequent events have fully justified their
decision; Mistress Weston proving not only renowned for the feminine
accomplishment of scolding (tongue-banging, it is called in our parts,
a compound word which deserves to be Greek), but is actually herself
addicted to administering the conjugal discipline, the infliction of
which she was pleased to impute to her luckless husband.

Now we cross the stile, and walk up the fields to the Shaw. How
beautifully green this pasture looks! and how finely the evening sun
glances between the boles of that clump of trees, beech, and ash, and
aspen! and how sweet the hedgerows are with woodbine and wild scabious,
or, as the country people call it, the gipsy-rose! Here is little Dolly
Weston, the unconscious witness, with cheeks as red as a real rose,
tottering up the path to meet her father. And here is the carroty-poled
urchin, George Coper, returning from work, and singing 'Home! sweet
Home!'