The place of the hangings, then, was a little door in the prison-wall, looking over the bank where the railway now goes, and a dismal piece of water called Jail-pool, where the townsfolk drowned most of the dogs and cats they’d no further use for.  All the bank under the gallows was that thick with people you could almost walk upon their heads; and my ribs were squeezed by the crowd so that I couldn’t breathe freely for a month after.  Back across the pool, the fields along the side of the valley were lined with booths and sweet-stalls and standings—­a perfect Whitsun-fair; and a din going up that cracked your ears.

But there was the stillness of death when the woman came forth, with the sheriff and the chaplain reading in his book, and the unnamed man behind—­all from the little door.  She wore a strait black gown, and a white kerchief about her neck—­a lovely woman, young and white and tearless.

She ran her eye over the crowd and stepped forward a pace, as if to speak; but lifted a finger and beckoned instead:  and out of the people a man fought his way to the foot of the scaffold.  ’Twas the dashing sergeant, that was here upon sick-leave.  Sick he was, I believe.  His face above his shining regimentals was grey as a slate; for he had committed perjury to save his skin, and on the face of the perjured no sun will ever shine.

“Have you got it?” the doomed woman said, many hearing the words.

He tried to reach, but the scaffold was too high, so he tossed up what was in his hand, and the woman caught it—­a little screw of tissue-paper.

“I must see that, please!” said the sheriff, laying a hand upon her arm.

“’Tis but a weddin’-ring, sir”—­and she slipped it over her finger.  Then she kissed it once, under the beam, and, lookin’ into the dragoon’s eyes, spoke very slow—­

“Husband, our child shall go wi’ you; an’ when I want you he shall fetch you.”

—­and with that turned to the sheriff, saying: 

“I be ready, sir.”

The sheriff wouldn’t give father and mother leave for me to touch the dead woman’s hand; so they drove back that evening grumbling a good bit.  ’Tis a sixteen-mile drive, and the ostler in at Bodmin had swindled the poor old horse out of his feed, I believe; for he crawled like a slug.  But they were so taken up with discussing the day’s doings, and what a mort of people had been present, and how the sheriff might have used milder language in refusing my father, that they forgot to use the whip.  The moon was up before we got halfway home, and a star to be seen here and there; and still we never mended our pace.

’Twas in the middle of the lane leading down to Hendra Bottom, where for more than a mile two carts can’t pass each other, that my father pricks up his ears and looks back.

“Hullo!” says he; “there’s somebody gallopin’ behind us.”

Far back in the night we heard the noise of a horse’s hoofs, pounding furiously on the road and drawing nearer and nearer.