"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.