I was leaning back against the chain, with my cap tilted forward to keep off the dazzle of the June sunshine on the water, and lazily watching Eli as he pushed his sweep.  Suddenly I grew aware that by frequent winks and jerks of the head he wished to direct my attention to a passenger on my right—­a short, round man in black, with a basket of eggs on his arm.

There was quite a remarkable dearth of feature on this passenger’s face, which was large, soft, and unhealthy in colour:  but what surprised me was to see, as he blinked in the sunlight, a couple of big tears trickle down his cheeks and splash among the eggs in his basket.

“There’s trouble agen, up at Kit’s,” remarked Eli, finishing his stroke with a jerk, and speaking for the general benefit, though the words were particularly addressed to a drover opposite.

“Ho?” said the drover:  “that woman agen?”

The passengers, one and all, bent their eyes on the man in black, who smeared his face with his cuff, and began weeping afresh, silently.

“Beat en blue las’ night, an’ turned en to doors—­the dirty trollop.”

“Eli, don’t ’ee—­” put in the poor man, in a low, deprecating voice.

“Iss, an’ no need to tell what for,” exclaimed a red-faced woman who stood by the drover, with two baskets of poultry at her feet.  “She’s a low lot; a low trapesin’ baggage.  If These-an’-That, there, wasn’ but a poor, ha’f-baked shammick, he’d ha’ killed that wife o’ his afore this.”

“Naybours, I’d as lief you didn’t mention it,” appealed These-an’-That, huskily.

“I’m afeard you’m o’ no account, These-an’-That:  but sam-sodden, if I may say so,” the drover observed.

“Put in wi’ the bread, an’ took out wi’ the cakes,” suggested Eli.

“Wife!—­a pretty loitch, she an’ the whole kit, up there!” went on the market-woman.  “If you durstn’t lay finger ’pon your wedded wife, These-an’-That, but let her an’ that long-legged gamekeeper turn’ee to doors, you must be no better’n a worm,—­that’s all I say.”

I saw the man’s face twitch as she spoke of the gamekeeper.  But he only answered in the same dull way.

“I’d as lief you didn’ mention it, friends,—­if ’tis all the same.”

His real name was Tom Warne, as I learnt from Eli afterwards; and he lived at St. Kit’s, a small fruit-growing hamlet two miles up the river, where his misery was the scandal of the place.  The very children knew it, and would follow him in a crowd sometimes, pelting him with horrible taunts as he slouched along the road to the kitchen garden out of which he made his living.  He never struck one; never even answered; but avoided the school-house as he would a plague; and if he saw the Parson coming would turn a mile out of his road.