t," promised Captain Vyell; and the Chief Magistrate
reluctantly gave way.

Ruth Josselin sat in the stocks. She had come so far out of her swoon
that her pulse beat, her breath came and went, she felt the sun warm on
her face, and was aware of some pain where the edge of the wood pressed
into her flesh, a little above the ankle-bones--of discomfort, rather,
in comparison with the anguish throbbing and biting across her
shoulder-blades. Some one--it may have been in unthinking mercy--had
drawn down the sackcloth over her stripes, and the coarse stuff,
irritating the raw, was as a shirt of fire.

She had come back to a sense of this torture, but not yet to complete
consciousness. She sat with eyes half closed, filmed with suffering.
As they had closed in the moment of swooning, so and with the same look
of horror they awoke as the lids parted. But they saw nothing; neither
the sunlight dappling the maple shadows nor the curious faces of the
crowd. She felt the sunlight; the crowd's presence she felt not at all.

But misery she felt; a blank of misery through which her reviving soul--
like the shoot of a plant trodden into mire--pushed feebly towards the
sunlight that coaxed her eyes to open. Something it sought there . . .
a face . . . yes, a face. . . .

--Yes, of course, a face; lifted high above other faces that were
hateful, hostile, mocking her misery--God knew why; a strong face, not
very pitiful--but so strong!--and yet it must be pitiful too, for it
condescended to help. It was moving down, bending, to help. . . .

--What had become of it? . . . Ah, now (shame at length reawakening) she
remembered! She was hiding from him. He was strong, he was kind, but
above all he must not see her shame. Let the earth cover her and hide
it! . . . and either the merciful earth had opened or a merciful
darkness had descended. She remembered sinking into it--sinking--her
hands held aloft, as by ropes. Then the ropes had parted. . . .
She had fallen, plumb. . . .

She was re-emerging now; and either shame lay far below, a cast-off weed
in the depths, or shame had driven out shame as fire drives out fire.
Her back was burning; her tongue was parched; her eyes were seared as
they half opened upon the crowd. The grinning faces--the mouths pulled
awry, mocking a sorrow they did not understand--these were meaningless
to her. She did not, in any real sense, behold them. Her misery was a
sea about her, and in the t