The Parson had called at the cottage a score of times at least:  for the business was quite intolerable.  Two evenings out of the six, the long-legged gamekeeper, who was just a big, drunken bully, would swagger easily into These-an’-That’s kitchen and sit himself down without so much as “by your leave.”  “Good evenin’, gamekeeper,” the husband would say in his dull, nerveless voice.  Mostly he only got a jeer in reply.  The fellow would sit drinking These-an’-That’s cider and laughing with These-an’-That’s wife, until the pair, very likely, took too much, and the woman without any cause broke into a passion, flew at the little man, and drove him out of doors, with broomstick or talons, while the gamekeeper hammered on the table and roared at the sport.  His employer was an absentee who hated the Parson, so the Parson groaned in vain over the scandal.

Well, one Fair-day I crossed in Eli’s boat with the pair.  The woman—­a dark gipsy creature—­was tricked out in violet and yellow, with a sham gold watch-chain and great aluminium earrings:  and the gamekeeper had driven her down in his spring-cart.  As Eli pushed off, I saw a small boat coming down the river across our course.  It was These-an’-That, pulling down with vegetables for the fair.  I cannot say if the two saw him:  but he glanced up for a moment at the sound of their laughter, then bent his head and rowed past us a trifle more quickly.  The distance was too great to let me see his face.

I was the last to step ashore.  As I waited for Eli to change my sixpence, he nodded after the couple, who by this time had reached the top of the landing-stage, arm in arm.’

“A bad day’s work for her, I reckon.”

It struck me at the moment as a moral reflection of Eli’s, and no more.  Late in the afternoon, however, I was enlightened.

In the midst of the Fair, about four o’clock, a din of horns, beaten kettles, and hideous yelling, broke out in Troy.  I met the crowd in the main street, and for a moment felt afraid of it.  They had seized the woman in the taproom of the “Man-o’-War”—­where the gamekeeper was lying in a drunken sleep—­and were hauling her along in a Ram Riding.  There is nothing so cruel as a crowd, and I have seen nothing in my life like the face of These-an’-That’s wife.  It was bleeding; it was framed in tangles of black, dishevelled hair; it was livid; but, above all, it was possessed with an awful fear—­a horror it turned a man white to look on.  Now and then she bit and fought like a cat:  but the men around held her tight, and mostly had to drag her, her feet trailing, and the horns and kettles dinning in her wake.

There lay a rusty old ducking-cage among the lumber up at the town-hall; and some fellows had fetched this down, with the poles and chain, and planted it on the edge of the Town Quay, between the American Shooting Gallery and the World-Renowned Swing Boats.  To this they dragged her, and strapped her fast.