"Keep a still tongue in your head, Roger," said Hugh when they were seated. "Greenspring Manor is beset with spies, and the Roundheads long for some pretext to hang Sir William for his devotion to our king; but Sir William says that the commonwealth will end with Cromwell and the son of our murdered king will be restored."
"The rule of the Roundheads is mild."
"Mild, bah!" interrupted Hugh, in contempt. "They are men without force, groundlings, the common trash from the earth with whom the best do not mingle."
"But they permit the people to send royalists to the House of Burgesses."
"That they do; yet there they must mingle with leet-men and indented slaves whose terms have expired," and Hugh heaved a sigh and dug his boot heel into the ground, adding, "It was not a merry day for old England when they struck off the king's head."
While the young royalists were discussing politics and awaiting the arrival of the guard with Ann Linkon, the women were not all silent.
"Good wives," said a hard-featured dame of fifty, "I will tell you a piece of my mind. It would be greatly for the public behoof, if we women being of mature age and church members in good repute like Ann Linkon might speak our minds of such baggage as Dorothe Stevens without being adjudged and sent to the ducking-stool as she is to be done. Wherefore is Dorothe Stevens so great that one must not say ill of her that they be plunged in the pond? Did she but have her deserts, would she be at home and Ann Linkon on the stool? Marry! I trow not!"
"Prythee, good dame Woodley, be more chary of your tongue, lest you be brought to judgment," interposed a more cautious sister.
Dame Woodley scowled and ground her teeth in silence for a short interval, and then resumed:
"I speak only to you five who know the wife of John Stevens truly. Despite all her airs and efforts to assume to herself a superiority, we know full well she hath her faults."
"Verily, she hath," interposed a female who had her hood drawn low over her face to protect it from the morning sun.
"And I have heard that she does lead poor John Stevens a miserable life. What with her extravagance, her temper, and the way she does hate his old mother whom he loves, his life must be a burden?" continued dame Woodley,
"Little the pity for him, though," interposed the woman whose weak eyes were half-hidden by her hood.
"Why say ye so, Sarah Drummond?"
"The more fool he to maintain such a creature."
"Marry! think you, Sarah, that a wife is like a shoe to be cast off at will? John Stevens hath two children, whom he loves as ardently as ever parent loved."
"I have known Dorothe Stevens to be kind and gentle," interposed a woman who had not spoken before.
"Yet she is haughty, and she would have all the world believe her of superior flesh and blood to ourselves. Doth not the Scriptures say that 'Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall'? Yea, verily, I wish she would break her neck when she doth fall."
At this moment, one of the petty officers came to the group of gossipers and cried:
"Go to! hold your peace, you prating dames! The prisoner comes."
A confused murmur swelled to a general hubbub as two men appeared over the hill leading between them a woman about fifty-five years of age. She was a strong, thin-visaged woman, whose cheek had been bronzed by sun and weather. She was bareheaded, and her hair was gathered in a knot at the back. Her gown, of a thick woollen stuff, fit closely to her person, as if it had been made on purpose for the punishment she had been adjudged to receive. She was talking in a loud voice and gesticulating angrily with her head, for her arms were confined.
"I will give ye a piece of my mind," she declared to her guards.
"Hold your peace, Ann!" cried the eldest of the guards.
"Hold my peace! Verily, I will, not hold my peace about such a hussy as Dorothe Stevens. That I, a Christian and Puritan, should be ducked for slandering one so foul as she! I choke at the thought."
"Marry! I wish you were silent."
"Silent, Joshua Chard, silent, indeed! Think ye that the fear of all the water in James River will awe me to silence?"
"No, by the mass, it will not," answered his companion.
"Lawrence Evans, unholy papist, do not touch me!"
"I am not a papist."
"Come, Ann Linkon, let us have this execution done with," put in Joshua, dragging the woman along.
The scene was now ridiculous enough to excite the laughter of even the gravest Puritans. The pond and ducking-stool were in sight, and Ann Linkon, with a persistence and strength that was marvellous, began to pull back, and when she had set her heels firmly in the ground it required the united strength of both guards to move her.
"I won't go! I won't be ducked! I won't! I won't!" she screamed at the top of her voice.
"Nay, Ann, bright flower of loveliness, you shall have a soft seat."
"Shame on you, Joshua, to drag an old woman like me by the arm."
"Marry! I am not dragging you, dame Linkon. Your heels do stick like a ploughshare in the ground."
The woman continued in her sharp, shrill voice to upbraid him:
"Ungrateful wretch, is it thus you serve one who fed you in your infancy, when your mother had deserted you? Unhand me, indented slave, and go back to your master, wretch--wretch--wretch!" she hissed, as she went sliding on her heels, her toes horizontal and her knees rigid. Her feet ploughed up the earth and stones, and the crowd hooted and jeered.
"Come on, Dame Linkon, and take your bath," cried some idle urchins, waiting at the water in anticipation of rare sport.
The victim continued to scream in her shrill voice:
"It's for that hussy! She bore false witness against me at the court and had me condemned. I will be avenged for this!"
"Marry! we will be more damp than you," said Joshua, wiping the perspiration from his forehead with the cuff of his coat.
"Joshua, is this payment for what I have done for you? When you were sick with fever I sat by your bedside and cared for you; when no one else would cook your food, it was I who did it, and is it thus you requite me?"
"Peace, good dame, I have my duty to perform."
"Duty; but such a duty!"
She still braced her heels against the ground, and it required all the strength of her guards to push and pull her along.
"Verily, I say such a duty," answered Joshua, on whose grave features there came a smile. "Dame Linkon, if you would limber your joints we could make more speed."
"I am in no hurry," she answered.
"I believe you; yet if you had
