times, 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.

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