rless.

She ran her eye over the crowd and stepped forward a pace, as if to
speak; but lifted a finger and beckoned instead: and out of the people a
man fought his way to the foot of the scaffold. 'Twas the dashing
sergeant, that was here upon sick-leave. Sick he was, I believe.
His face above his shining regimentals was grey as a slate; for he had
committed perjury to save his skin, and on the face of the perjured no
sun will ever shine.

"Have you got it?" the doomed woman said, many hearing the words.

He tried to reach, but the scaffold was too high, so he tossed up what
was in his hand, and the woman caught it--a little screw of
tissue-paper.

"I must see that, please!" said the sheriff, laying a hand upon her arm.

"'Tis but a weddin'-ring, sir"--and she slipped it over her finger.
Then she kissed it once, under the beam, and, lookin' into the dragoon's
eyes, spoke very slow--

"_Husband, our child shall go wi' you; an' when I want you he shall
fetch you._"

--and with that turned to the sheriff, saying:

"I be ready, sir."

The sheriff wouldn't give father and mother leave for me to touch the
dead woman's hand; so they drove back that evening grumbling a good bit.
'Tis a sixteen-mile drive, and the ostler in at Bodmin had swindled the
poor old horse out of his feed, I believe; for he crawled like a slug.
But they were so taken up with discussing the day's doings, and what a
mort of people had been present, and how the sheriff might have used
milder language in refusing my father, that they forgot to use the whip.
The moon was up before we got halfway home, and a star to be seen here
and there; and still we never mended our pace.

'Twas in the middle of the lane leading down to Hendra Bottom, where for
more than a mile two carts can't pass each other, that my father pricks
up his ears and looks back.

"Hullo!" says he; "there's somebody gallopin' behind us."

Far back in the night we heard the noise of a horse's hoofs, pounding
furiously on the road and drawing nearer and nearer.

"Save us!" cries father; "whoever 'tis, he's comin' down th' lane!"
And in a minute's time the clatter was close on us and someone shouting
behind.

"Hurry that crawlin' worm o' yourn--or draw aside in God's name, an' let
me by!" the rider yelled.

"What's up?" asked my father, quartering as well as he could.
"Why! Hullo! Farmer Hugo, be that you?"

"There's a mad devil o' a man behind, ridin' down all he comes