MOORE.

Sir Christopher, on leaving the Governor, proceeded in the direction of the hostelry, where he had left his horse; and on his way was greeted with one of those sights to be seen only in this strange commonwealth.  It was a woman in the stocks, being no other than an old acquaintance, Dame Bars, the wife of the jailer.  The good woman possessed a kind heart, but she was not perfection.  She had a weakness for a pot of ale; and, if justice had in anywise been done to the proportion of malt therein, it was very apt to make her eloquent to an extraordinary degree.  On these occasions, feeling herself to be clearly in the right, she found it difficult to endure contradiction, considering it excessively unreasonable and rude, and expressing her sentiments thereupon with great freedom.  In one of these moods, she had been overheard by Master Prout, in a colloquy with one of her gossips, contrasting the “wearyful and forlorn” condition of women in the colony with the merry times she used to have in England; and upon her friend suggesting a few words in favor of the change, bursting out with sundry epithets more sounding than musical, and more energetic than complimentary.

We will not pretend to say whether Master Prout was more scandalized by the sentiment of dissatisfaction at the colony, or by there proaches lavished on the other goody, who, indeed, to do her justice, was not slow in the use of that formidable weapon wherewith Nature, as if to make amends for physical weakness, has armed the lovelier sex.  It may be that both combined roused his righteous indignation, in consequence whereof Dame Bars had to expiate the sins of her tongue by silencing its eloquence in a cleft stick, and cooling her heels in the stocks.

But the appearance of the poor woman was now anything but belligerent.  So far from manifesting a refractory disposition, her face was covered with her hands, and tears of shame and mortification were stealing through the fingers.  Her husband was standing by her side, and endeavoring to comfort her, while Master Prout, with his long staff, was threatening some idle school-boys, who, with the mischief natural to their age, were showing an inclination to proceed to extremities against the captive, which was not approved by the grave custode of order.

As the Knight drew nigh, a feeling of pity was excited in him, and he stopped, and addressed some words to the officer of the law.

“I am unwilling,” said Master Prout, in reply, “to refuse any thing to a gentleman so highly esteemed by the Governor, as yourself, Sir Christopher, and therefore will I release the woman; but truly was it my intention to detain her an hour or two longer, in order that she might have time for serious and profitable reflection.  Verily, as saith James, in his epistle, the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.”

“Methinks then,” said the Knight, smiling, “thou hast performed an achievement which holy St. James himself might deem a miracle, for the good dame’s tongue is tame enough at present.”