othe Stevens so great that one must not say ill of her that they
be plunged in the pond? Did she but have her deserts, would she be at
home and Ann Linkon on the stool? Marry! I trow not!"

"Prythee, good dame Woodley, be more chary of your tongue, lest you be
brought to judgment," interposed a more cautious sister.

Dame Woodley scowled and ground her teeth in silence for a short
interval, and then resumed:

"I speak only to you five who know the wife of John Stevens truly.
Despite all her airs and efforts to assume to herself a superiority, we
know full well she hath her faults."

"Verily, she hath," interposed a female who had her hood drawn low over
her face to protect it from the morning sun.

"And I have heard that she does lead poor John Stevens a miserable life.
What with her extravagance, her temper, and the way she does hate his
old mother whom he loves, his life must be a burden?" continued
dame Woodley,

"Little the pity for him, though," interposed the woman whose weak eyes
were half-hidden by her hood.

"Why say ye so, Sarah Drummond?"

"The more fool he to maintain such a creature."

"Marry! think you, Sarah, that a wife is like a shoe to be cast off at
will? John Stevens hath two children, whom he loves as ardently as ever
parent loved."

"I have known Dorothe Stevens to be kind and gentle," interposed a woman
who had not spoken before.

"Yet she is haughty, and she would have all the world believe her of
superior flesh and blood to ourselves. Doth not the Scriptures say that
'Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall'?
Yea, verily, I wish she would break her neck when she doth fall."

At this moment, one of the petty officers came to the group of gossipers
and cried:

"Go to! hold your peace, you prating dames! The prisoner comes."

A confused murmur swelled to a general hubbub as two men appeared over
the hill leading between them a woman about fifty-five years of age. She
was a strong, thin-visaged woman, whose cheek had been bronzed by sun
and weather. She was bareheaded, and her hair was gathered in a knot at
the back. Her gown, of a thick woollen stuff, fit closely to her
person, as if it had been made on purpose for the punishment she had
been adjudged to receive. She was talking in a loud voice and
gesticulating angrily with her head, for her arms were confined.

"I will give ye a piece of my mind," she declared to her guards.

"Hold your peace, Ann!" c