waiting for them to wash to her feet a dead bird fallen beyond reach.
"See her, do you?  I call you to witness!" repeated the voice at his
elbow.

"Why, what is the matter?"

"Sabbath breakin'," answered Mr. Banner with a curious leer.

"Ah!"

"But you yourself don't take much account of the Lord's Day, seemingly.
Bathin', f'r instance."

"Indeed!" The Collector eyed his companion reflectively.  "You honoured
me with your observation this morning?"

Mr. Banner grinned.  "Better say the whole of Port Nassau was hon'rin'
you.  Oh, there'd be no lack of evidence!--but I guess the magistrates
were lookin' the other way.  They allowed, no doubt, that even a
Sabbath-breaker might be havin' friends at Court!"

The Collector could not forbear smiling at the youth's impudence.

"May I ask what punishment I have probably escaped by that advantage?"

"Well," said Mr. Banner, "for lighter cases it's usually the stocks."

Still the Collector smiled.  "I am trying to picture it," said he, after
a pause.  "But you don't tell me they would put a young girl in the
stocks, merely for firing a gun on the Lord's Day, as you call it?"

"Wouldn't they!" Mr. Banner chuckled.  "That, or the pillory."

"You are a strange folk in Port Nassau."  The Collector frowned, upon a
sudden suspicion, and his eyes darkened in their scrutiny of Mr.
Banner's unpleasant face.  "By the way, you told me just now that you
were here upon some sort of a dispensation.  Forgive me if I do you
wrong, but was it by any chance that you might play the spy upon this
girl?"

"Shadbolt asked me to keep an eye liftin' for her."

"Who is Shadbolt?"

"The Town Beadle.  He's watchin' somewhere along the cliffs."
Mr. Banner waved a hand towards the neck of the headland.
"It's a scandal, and by all accounts has been goin' on for weeks."

"So that is why you called me to witness?  Well, Mr. Banner, I have a
horsewhip lying on the turf yonder, and I warn you to forget your
suggestion. . . . Shall we resume our measurements?--and, if you please,
in silence.  Your presence is distasteful to me."

They turned from the cliff and went back to their work, in which--for
they both enjoyed it--they were soon immersed.  It may have been, too,
that the wind had shifted.  At any rate they missed to hear, ten minutes
later, a second shot fired on the beach, not more distant but fainter
than the first.



Chapter IX.


THE SCOURGE.


Next morning, at ten o'clock, the Collector's coach-and-six stood at the
Inn gate, harnessed up and ready for the return journey.  In the
road-way beyond one of the grooms waited with a hand on Bayard's bridle.

The Collector, booted and spurred, with riding-whip tucked under his
arm, came up the pebbled pathway, drawing on his gauntleted gloves.
Dicky trotted beside him.  Manasseh followed in attendance.  Behind them
in the porchway the landlady bobbed unregarded, like a piece of
clockwork gradually running down.

"Hey!"  The Collector, as he reached the gate, lifted his chin sharply--
threw up his head as a finely bred animal scents battle or danger.
"What's this?  A riot, up the street?"

The grooms could not tell him, for the sound had reached their ears but
a second or two before the question; a dull confused murmur out of
which, as it increased to a clamour and drew nearer, sharper outcries
detached themselves, and the shrill voices of women.  A procession had
turned the corner of the head of the avenue--a booing, howling rabble.

The Collector stepped to his horse's rein, flung himself into saddle,
and rode forward at a foot's pace to meet the tumult.

Suddenly his hand tightened on the rein, and Bayard came to a halt; but
his master did not perceive this.  The hand's movement had been nervous,
involuntary.  He sat erect--stood, rather, from the stirrup--his nostril
dilated, his brain scarcely believing what his eyes saw.

"The swine!" he said slowly, to himself.  His teeth were shut and the
words inaudible.  "The swine!" he repeated.

Men have done, in the name of religion and not so long ago--indeed are
perhaps doing now and daily--deeds so vile that mere decency cannot face
describing them.  It is a question if mere decency (by which I mean the
good instinct of civilised man) will not in the end purge faith clean of
religion; if, while men dispute and hate and inflict cruelty for
religion, they are not all the while outgrowing it.  Libraries, for
example, are written to prove that unbaptized infants come out of
darkness to draw a fleeting breath or two and pass to hell-fire; the
dispute occupies men for generations--and lo! one day the world finds it
has no use for any such question.  Time--no thanks to the theologians--
has educated it, and this thing at any rate it would no longer believe
if it could, as it certainly cannot.  Faith never yet has burnt man or
woman at the stake.  Religion has burnt its tens of thousands.

Behind the first two or three ranks of the mob--an exultant mob of grown
men, grown women, and (worst of all) little children--plodded a grey
horse, drawing a cart.  Behind the cart, bound to it, with a thong tight
about her fire-scorched wrists--But no; it is not to be written.

They had stripped her to the waist, and then for decency--_their_
decency!--had thrown a jacket of coarse sacking over her, lacing it
loosely in front with pack-thread.  But, because their work required it,
this garment had been gathered up into a rope at the neck, whence it
dangled in folds over her young breast.

She walked with wide eyes, uttering no sound.  She alone of that crowd
uttered no sound.  A brute with a bandaged jaw walked close behind her.
Oliver Vyell saw his forearm swing up--saw the scourge whirl in his
fist--met the girl's eyes. . . . She, meeting his, let escape the
first and last cry she uttered that day.  He could have sworn that
her face was scarlet; but no, he was wrong; while he looked he saw
his mistake-she was white as death.  Then with that one pitiful cry
she sank among the close-pressing crowd; but her hands, by the cord's
constraint, still lifted themselves as might a drowning swimmer's;
and the grey horse--the one other innocent creature in that
procession--plodded forward, dragging her now senseless body at the
cart's tail.

"You swine!"

It does a man good sometimes to get in his blow.  It did Oliver Vyell
good, riding in, to slash twice crosswise on the brute's bandaged face;
to feel the whalebone bite and then, as he swung out of saddle, to ram
fist and whip-butt together on the ugly mouth, driving in its
fore-teeth.

"Stop the horse, some one!" he commanded, as the Beadle reeled back.
"She has fainted." He added, "The first man that interferes, I shoot."

The crowd growled.  He turned on the nearest mutterer--"Your knife!"
The fellow handed it; so promptly, he might have been holding it ready
to proffer.  The Collector stooped and cut the thongs.  This done, he
stood up and saw the Beadle advancing again, snarling through the
bloody gap in his mouth.

"You had best take that man away," said the Collector quietly, pulling
out his small pistol.  "If you don't, I am going to kill him."
They heard and saw that he meant it.  He added in the same tone,
"I am going to take all responsibility for this.  Will you make way,
please?"

His first intention was to lift the body lying unconscious in the
roadway, carry it to the coach and drive out of Port Nassau with it,
defying the law to interfere.  For the moment he "saw red," as we say
nowadays, and was quite capable of shooting down, or bidding his
servants shoot down, any man who offered to hinder.  It is even possible
that had he acted straightway upon the impulse, he might, with his
momentary mastery of the mob, have won clean away; possible, but by no
means likely, for already a couple of constables were pushing forward to
support the Beadle, and half a dozen broad-shouldered fellows--haters of
"prerogative"--had recovered themselves and were ranging up to support
the law.  Had he noted this, it would not have daunted him.  What he
noted, and what gave him pause, was the girl's white back at his feet,
upturning its hideous weals.  He stooped to lift her, and drew back,
shivering delicately at the thought of hurting the torn flesh in his
arms--a vain scruple, since she had passed for the moment beyond pain.
He picked up the scourge, and stood erect again, crushing it into his
pocket.

"Will you make way, please," he ordered, "while I fetch a cover to hide
your blasted handiwork?"

He strode through them, and they fell back to give him passage.
He walked straight to the coach, pulled the door open, and, in the act
of dragging forth a rug, caught sight of Dicky's small, scared face.

"Oh papa, what has happened?"

"An accident, child.  Jump inside; I will explain by-and-by."

"Begging your Honour's pardon"--a heavy-featured fellow, who had
followed the Collector to the coach, put out a hand and touched the
child's shoulder--"I don't hold in whipping maidens, and if it's a fight
I'm with you.  But you can't carry her out of it, the way you're
meaning.  They've seen blood, same as yourself.  This child of yours--he
stands as much chance to be hurt as any, if you push it.  Your Honour'll
have to find some other way."

The Collector glanced over his shoulder, and saw that the man spoke
truth.

"Dicky," he said easily, but in a voice the child durst not disobey,
"there has been an accident.  Go you down and amuse yourself on the
sands till Manasseh calls you."

He walked back coolly, carrying the rug on his arm.

"Where was she to be taken?" he asked.

"To the stocks!" answered a voice or two.  "To the Court-house!" said
others.

"It's the same thing," said the heavy-browed man, at the Collector's
elbow.  "The stocks are just across the square from the Court-house.
You'll find the magistrates there; they're the ones to face.  They took
her case first this morning, and this is the first part of her
sentence."

Oliver Vyell walked back to the crowd.  It was--a glance assured him--
more hostile than before; had recovered from its surprise, and was
menacing.  But it gave way again before him.

He called on them to give more room.  He stooped and, spreading the rug
over the girl's body, lifted and laid her in the straw of the cart.
A constable would have interfered.  The Collector swung round on him.

"You are taking her back to the Court-house?  Well, I have business
there too.  Where is your Court-house?"

The constable pointed.

"Up the road?  I am obliged to you.  Drive on, if you please."



Chapter X.


THE BENCH.


The wooden Jail and the wooden Court-house of Port Nassau faced one
another across an unpaved grass-grown square planted with maples.
To-day--for the fall of the leaf was at hand--these maples flamed with
hectic yellows and scarlets; and indeed thousands of leaves, stripped by
the recent gales, already strewed the cross-walks and carpeted the
ground about the benches disposed in the shade--pleasant seats to which,
of an empty afternoon, wives brought their knitting and gossiped while
their small children played within sight; haunts, later in the day, of
youths who whittled sticks or carved out names with jack-knives--ancient
solace of the love-stricken; rarely thronged save when some transgressor
was brought to the stocks or the whipping-post.

These instruments of public discipline stood on the northern side of the
square, before the iron-studded door of the Jail.  The same hand, may
be, that had blackened over the Jail's weather-boarded front with a coat
of tar, had with equal propriety whitewashed the facade of the
Court-house; an immaculate building, set in the cool shade, its
straight-lined front broken only by a recessed balcony, whence, as
occasion arose, Mr. George Bellingham, Chief Magistrate, delivered the
text of a proclamation, royal or provincial, or declared the poll when
the people of Port Nassau chose their Selectmen.

This morning Mr. Bellingham held session within, in the long, airy
Court-room, and dispensed justice with the help of three
fellow-magistrates--Mr. Trask, Mr. Somershall, and our friend
Mr. Wapshott.  They sat at a long baize-covered table, with the
Justices' Clerk to advise them.  On the wall behind and above their
heads hung a framed panel emblazoned with the royal escutcheon, the lion
and unicorn for supporters, an inscription in old French to the effect
that there is shame in evil-thinking, and another:--

CAR         II.


FID         DEF.

distributed among the four corners of the panel, with the date 1660
below.  This had been erected (actually in 1664, but the artist had
received instructions to antedate it) when the good people of
Massachusetts after some demur rejoiced in the Restoration and accepted
King Charles II. as defender of their Faith.

The four magistrates had dealt (as we know) with a case of
Sabbath-breaking; had inflicted various terms of imprisonment on two
drunkards and a beggar-woman; had discharged for lack of evidence (but
with admonition) a youth accused of profane swearing; and were now
working through a list of commoner and more venial offences, such as
cheating by the use of false weights.

These four grave gentlemen looked up in slightly shocked deprecation;
for the Collector entered without taking account of the constable at the
door, save to thrust him aside.  The Clerk called "Silence in the
Court!" mechanically, and a deputy-beadle at his elbow as mechanically
repeated it.

"Your Worships"--the Collector, hat in hand advanced to the table and
bowed--"will forgive an interruption which only its urgency can excuse."

"Ah!  Captain Vyell, I believe?"  Mr. Bellingham arose from his
high-backed throne of carved oak, bowed, and extended a hand across the
table.  "I had heard that you were honouring Port Nassau with a visit;
but understanding from our friend Mr. Wapshott that the visit was--er--
not official--that, in fact, it was connected with government business
not--er--to be divulged, I forbore to do myself the pleasure--"
Mr. Bellingham had a courtly manner and a courtly presence.  He was a
tallish man, somewhat thin in the face and forehead, of classical
features, and a sanguine complexion.  He came of a family highly
distinguished in the history of Massachusetts; but he was in fact a weak
man, though he concealed this by some inherited aptitude for public
business and a well-trained committee manner.

"I thank you."  The Collector shook the preferred hand and bowed again.
"You will pardon my abruptness?  A girl has fainted outside here, in the
street--"

Mr. Bellingham's well-shaped brows arched themselves a trifle higher.

"Indeed?" he murmured, at a loss.

"A young girl who--as I understand--was suffering public punishment
under sentence of yours."

"Yes?" Mr. Bellingham's smile grew vaguer, and his two hands touched
finger-tips in front of his magisterial stomach--an adequate stomach but
well on the right side of grossness.  He glanced at his
fellow-magistrates right and left.  "It--er---sometimes happens," he
suggested.

"I dare say." Captain Vyell took him up.  "But she has fainted under the
punishment.  She has passed the limit of her powers, poor child; and
they tell me that what she has endured is to be followed, and at once,
by five hours in the stocks.  Gentlemen, I repeat I am quite well aware
that this is most irregular--you may call it indecent; but I saw the
poor creature fall, and, as it happens, I know something that might have
softened you before you passed sentence."

Here the Clerk interposed, stiffening the Chief Magistrate, who wore a
smile of embarrassed politeness.

"As His Honour--as Captain Vyell--suggests, your Worships, this is quite
irregular."

"To be sure--to be sure--of course," hemm'd Mr. Bellingham.  "We can
only overlook that, when appealed to by a person of your distinction;"
here he inclined himself gently.  "Still, you will understand, a
sentence is a sentence.  As for a temporary faintness, that is by no
means outside our experience.  Our Beadle--Shadbolt--invariably manages
to revive them sufficiently to endure--er--the rest."

I'll be shot if he will this time, thought the Collector grimly, with a
glance down at a smear across the knuckle of his right-hand glove.
The sight of it cheered him and steadied his temper.  "Possibly," said
he aloud.  "But your worships may not be aware--and as merciful men may
be glad to hear--that this poor creature's offence against the Sabbath
was committed under stress.  Her mother and grandfather have starved
this week through, as I happen to know."

"That may or may not be," put in Mr. Trask--a dry-complexioned,
stubborn, malignant-looking man, seated next on the Chairman's right.
"But the girl--if you mean Ruth Josselin--has not been scourged for
Sabbath-breaking.  For that she will sit in the stocks--our invariable
sentence for first offenders in this respect."  From under his
down-drawn brows Mr. Trask eyed the Collector malevolently.
"Ruth Josselin," he continued, "has suffered the scourge for having
resisted Beadle Shadbolt in the discharge of his duty, and for unlawful
wounding."

"Excuse me," put in Mr. Somershall, speaking across from the Chairman's
left.  Mr. Somershall was afflicted with deafness, but liked to assert
himself whenever a word by chance reached him and gave him a cue.
He leaned sideways, arching a palm around his one useful ear.
"Excuse me; we brought it in 'attempted wounding,' I believe?  I have it
noted so, here on the margin of my charge-sheet."  He glanced at the
Clerk, who nodded for confirmation.

"It didn't matter," Mr. Trask snapped brutally.  "She got it, just the
same."

"Oh, quite so!"  Mr. Somershall took his hand from his ear and nodded,
satisfied with having made his point.

"Wounding?" echoed the Collector, addressing the Chairman.  "To be frank
with you, sir, I had not heard of this--though it scarcely affects my
plea."

Mr. Bellingham smiled indulgently.  "Say no more, Captain Vyell--pray
say no more!  This is not the first time an inclination to deem us
severe has been corrected by a fuller acquaintance with the facts. . . .
Yes, yes--chivalrous feeling--I quite understand; but you see--"
He concluded his sentence with a gentle wave of the hand.  "You will be
glad to hear, since you take an interest in the girl, that Providence
overruled her aim and Shadbolt escaped with a mere graze of the jaw--so
slight, indeed, that, taking a merciful view, we decided not to consider
it an actual wound, and convicted her only of the attempt.  By the way,
Mr. Leemy, where is the weapon?"

The Clerk produced it from his bag and laid it on the table.
Captain Vyell drew a sharp breath.

"It is my pistol."

"Eh?"

"I have the fellow to it here."  He pulled out the other and handed it
by the muzzle.

"To be sure--to be sure; the pattern is identical," murmured Mr.
Bellingham, examining it and for the moment completely puzzled.
"You--er--suggest that she stole it?"

"Certainly not.  I lent it to her."

There followed a slow pause.  It was broken by the grating voice of Mr.
Trask--

"You remember, Mr. Chairman, that the prisoner stubbornly refused to
tell how the pistol came in her possession?  Does Captain Vyell give us
to understand that his interest in this young woman is of older date
than this morning's encounter?"

"My interest in her--such as it is--dates, sir, from the evening before
last, when she was dismissed from the Bowling Green Inn.  The hour was
late; her home, as you know, lies at some distance--though doubtless
within the ambit of your authority.  I lent her this small weapon to
protect herself should she be molested."

"And she used it next day upon the Beadle!  Dismissed, you say?  Why was
she dismissed?"

"I regret that I was not more curious at the time," answered the
Collector with the politest touch of weariness.  "I believe it was for
saving the house from fire--something of that sort.  As told to me, it
sounded rather heroical.  But, sir--" he turned again to the Chairman--"
I suggest that all this does not affect my plea.  Whatever her offence,
she has suffered cruelly.  She is physically unfit to bear this second
punishment; and when I tell you on my word as a gentleman--or on oath,
if you will--that on Saturday I found her grandparent starving and that
her second offence was committed presumably to supply the household
wants, surely I shall not entreat your mercy in vain?"

The Chief Magistrate hesitated, and a frown showed his annoyance.
"To tell you the truth, Captain Vyell, you put me in a quandary.
I do not like to refuse you--"  Here he glanced right and left.

"But it can't be done," snapped Mr. Trask.  Mr. Wapshott, sitting just
beyond, shook his head gently and--as he hoped--unperceived by the
Collector.

"You see, sir," explained Mr. Bellingham with a sigh, "we sit here to
administer justice without fear or favour.  You see also to what scandal
it might give rise if a culprit--merely on the intercession of a
gentleman like yourself--influential--er--and, in short--"

"--In short, sir," the Collector broke in, "you have in the name of
justice committed one damnable atrocity upon this child, and plead your
cowardice as an excuse for committing another.  Influential, am I?
And you prate to me of not being affected by that?  Very well; I'll take
you at your word.  This girl resisted your ruffian in the discharge of
his duty?  So did I just now, and with such effect that he will resume
it neither to-day nor to-morrow.  She inflicted, it appears, a slight
graze on his chin.  I inflicted two cuts on his face and knocked in
three of his teeth.  You can take cognisance of _my_ wounding, I promise
you.  Now, sir, will you whip _me_ through your town?"

"This is mere violence, sir."  Mr. Bellingham's face was flushed, but he
answered with dignity.  "The law is as little to be exasperated as
defied."

"I will try you in another way, then," said the Collector, recovering
grip of his temper and dropping his voice to a tone of politest
insolence.  "It is understood that you have not the courage to do this
because, seated here and administering what you call justice, you have,
each one of you, an eye upon England and preferment, and you know well
enough that to touch me would play the devil among the tailors with your
little ambitions.  I except"--with a bow towards Mr. Trask--"this
gentleman, who seems to have earned his influence on your counsels by
rugged force of character, And--" for here Mr. Trask, who enjoyed a dig
at his colleagues, cast his eyes down and compressed a grin--"is, I
should judge, capable of striking a woman for the mere fun of it."
Here Mr. Bellingham and Mr. Wapshott looked demure in turn; for that
Mr. Trask led his wife a dog's life was notorious.

"--In truth, gentlemen," the Collector continued easily, "I am at some
loss in addressing you, seeing that through some defect of courtesy you
have omitted to wait on me, albeit informed (I believe) that I came as
His Majesty's Commissioner, and that therefore I have not even the
pleasure of knowing your names.  I may except that of Mr. Wapshott, whom
I am glad to see convalescent this morning."  Here he inclined to Mr.
Wapshott, whose gills under the surprised gaze of his colleagues took a
perceptibly redder tinge.  "Mr. Wapshott, gentlemen," explained the
Collector, smiling, "had a slight attack of vertigo yesterday, on the
steps of his Place of Worship.  Well, sirs, as I was saying, I will try
you in another way.  You have not the courage to bring me to trial for
assaulting your beadle.  You have not even the courage, here and now, to
throw me out.  I believe, however, that upon a confessed breach of the
law--supported by evidence, if necessary--I can force you to try me.
The Clerk will correct me if I am wrong. . . . Apparently he assents.
Then I desire to confess to you that yesterday, at such-and-such an
hour, I broke your laws or bye-laws of Lord's Day Observance; by bathing
in the sea for my pleasure.  I demand trial on this charge, and, if you
convict me--here you can hardly help yourselves, since to my knowledge
some of you witnessed the offence--I demand my due punishment of the
stocks."

"Really--really, Captain Vyell!" hemm'd the Chief Magistrate.
"Passing over your derogatory language, I am at a loss to understand--"

"Are you?  Yet it is very simple.  Since you reject my plea for this
poor creature, I desire to share her punishment."

"Let him," snapped the mouth of Mr. Trask again, opening and shutting
like a trap.

"_You_ at any rate, sir, have sense," the Collector felicitated him and
turned to the Chief Magistrate.  "And you, sir, if you will oblige me,
may rest assured that I shall bear the magistracy of Port Nassau no
grudge whatever."



Chapter XI.


THE STOCKS.


In the end they came to a compromise.  That Dame Justice should be
hustled in this fashion--taken by the shoulders, so to speak, forced to
catch up her robe and skip--offended the Chief Magistrate's sense of
propriety.  It was unseemly in the last degree, he protested.
Nevertheless it appeared certain that Captain Vyell had a right to be
tried and punished; and the Clerk's threat to set down the hearing for
an adjourned sessions was promptly countered by the culprit's producing
His Majesty's Commission, which enjoined upon all and sundry "_to
observe the welfare of my faithful subject, Oliver John Dinham de Courcy
Vyell, now travelling on the business of this my Realm, and to further
that business with all zeal and expedition as required by him_"--a
command which might be all the more strictly construed for being loosely
worded.  To be sure the Court might by dilatory process linger out the
hearing of the Weights and Measures cases--one of which was being
scandalously interrupted at this moment--or it might adjourn for dinner
and reassemble in the afternoon, by which time the sands of Ruth
Josselin's five hours' ignominy would be running out.  But here Mr.
Somershall had to be reckoned with.  Mr. Somershall not only made it a
practice to sit long at dinner and sleep after it; he invariably lost
his temper if the dinner-hour were delayed; and, being deaf as well as
honest, he was capable of blurting out his mind in a fashion to confound
either of these disingenuous courses.  As for Mr. Wapshott, the wording
of the Commission had frightened him, and he wished himself at home.

It was Mr. Trask who found the way out.  Mr. Trask, his malevolent eye
fixed on the Collector, opined that after all an hour or two in the
stocks would be a salutary lesson for hot blood and pampered flesh.
He suggested that, without insisting on a trial, the Captain might be
obliged, and his legs given that lesson.  He cited precedents.
More than once a friend or relative had, by mercy of the Court, been
allowed to sit beside a culprit under punishment.  If, a like leave
being granted him, Captain Vyell preferred to have his ankles
confined--why, truly, Mr. Trask saw no reason for denying him the
experience.  But the Captain, it was understood, must give his word of
honour, first, to accept this as a free concession from the Bench, and,
secondly, not to repent or demand release before the expiry of the five
hours.

"With all my heart," promised Captain Vyell; and the Chief Magistrate
reluctantly gave way.


Ruth Josselin sat in the stocks.  She had come so far out of her swoon
that her pulse beat, her breath came and went, she felt the sun warm on
her face, and was aware of some pain where the edge of the wood pressed
into her flesh, a little above the ankle-bones--of discomfort, rather,
in comparison with the anguish throbbing and biting across her
shoulder-blades.  Some one--it may have been in unthinking mercy--had
drawn down the sackcloth over her stripes, and the coarse stuff,
irritating the raw, was as a shirt of fire.

She had come back to a sense of this torture, but not yet to complete
consciousness.  She sat with eyes half closed, filmed with suffering.
As they had closed in the moment of swooning, so and with the same look
of horror they awoke as the lids parted.  But they saw nothing; neither
the sunlight dappling the maple shadows nor the curious faces of the
crowd.  She felt the sunlight; the crowd's presence she felt not at all.

But misery she felt; a blank of misery through which her reviving soul--
like the shoot of a plant trodden into mire--pushed feebly towards the
sunlight that coaxed her eyes to open.  Something it sought there . . .
a face . . . yes, a face. . . .

--Yes, of course, a face; lifted high above other faces that were
hateful, hostile, mocking her misery--God knew why; a strong face, not
very pitiful--but so strong!--and yet it must be pitiful too, for it
condescended to help.  It was moving down, bending, to help. . . .

--What had become of it? . . . Ah, now (shame at length reawakening) she
remembered!  She was hiding from him.  He was strong, he was kind, but
above all he must not see her shame.  Let the earth cover her and hide
it! . . . and either the merciful earth had opened or a merciful
darkness had descended.  She remembered sinking into it--sinking--her
hands held aloft, as by ropes.  Then the ropes had parted. . . .
She had fallen, plumb. . . .

She was re-emerging now; and either shame lay far below, a cast-off weed
in the depths, or shame had driven out shame as fire drives out fire.
Her back was burning; her tongue was parched; her eyes were seared as
they half opened upon the crowd.  The grinning faces--the mouths pulled
awry, mocking a sorrow they did not understand--these were meaningless
to her.  She did not, in any real sense, behold them.  Her misery was a
sea about her, and in the trough of it she looked up, seeking one face.

--And why not?  It had shone far above her as a god's; but she had been
sucked down as deep again, and there is an extreme of degradation may
meet even a god's altitude on equal terms.  Stark mortal, stark god--its
limit of suffering past, humanity joins the celestial, clasping its
knees.

Of a sudden, turning her eyes a little to the left, she saw him.

He had come at a strolling pace across the square, with Manasseh and the
deputy-beadle walking wide beside him, and the Court-house rabble at his
heels, but keeping, in spite of themselves, a respectful distance.
At the stocks he faced about, and they halted on the instant, as though
he had spoken a word of command.  He smiled, seated himself leisurably
at the end of the bench on Ruth Josselin's left, and extended a leg for
Manasseh to draw off its riding-boot.  At the back of the crowd a few
voices chattered, but within the semicircle a hush had fallen.

It was then that she turned her eyes and saw him.

How came he here?  What was he doing? . . . She could not comprehend at
all.  Only she felt her heart leap within her and stand still, as like a
warm flood the consciousness of his presence stole through her, poured
over her, soothing away for the moment all physical anguish.  She sat
very still, her hands in her lap; afraid to move, afraid even to look
again.  This consciousness--it should have been shame, but it held no
shame at all.  It was hope.  It came near, very near, to bliss.

She was aware in a dull way of some one unlocking and lifting the upper
beam of the stocks.  Were they releasing her?  Surely her sentence had
been for five hours?--surely her faintness could not have lasted so
long!  This could not be the end?  She did not wish to be released.
She would not know what to do, where to go, when they set her free.
She must walk home through the town, and that would be worst of all.

Or perhaps _he_ was commanding them to release her? . . . No; the beam
creaked and dropped into place again.  A moment ago his voice had been
speaking; speaking very cheerfully, not to her.  Now it was silent.
After some minutes she gathered courage to turn her eyes again.

Captain Vyell sat with his legs in durance.  They were very shapely
legs, cased in stockings of flesh-coloured silk with crimson knee-ties.
He sat in perfect patience, and rolled a tobacco-leaf between his
fingers.  At his shoulder stood Manasseh like a statue, with face
immobile as Marble--black marble--and a tinder-box ready in his hand.

"Why? . . ."

He could not be sure if it were a word, or merely a sigh, deep in her
breast, so faintly it reached him.  She had murmured it as if to
herself, yet it seemed to hang on a question.  His ear was alert.

"Hush!" he said, speaking low and without glancing towards her, for the
eyes of the crowd were on them.  "The faintness is over?"