Jeffray walked with Wilson through the park to Rodenham village, the painter dressed again in his cocked hat, rusty brown suit and club-tailed wig. The day was Shrove-Tuesday, as Jeffray would have discovered earlier had he invaded his own kitchen and found the grooms and wenches tossing pancakes. Rodenham village itself was in a holiday temper, the boors turning out in clean smocks, the girls and women tricked out in their best gowns, with ribbon in their hair and new scarlet stockings showing under their short petticoats. Even the brats had had their faces polished and been blessed with clean pinafores. The benches in front of the Wheat Sheaf were ladened with farmers who had come in to drink George Gogg’s beer and watch the “cock-throwing.” Old Sam Sturtevant, the cobbler, had been training a couple of cocks since Christmas, and the birds were as nimble and spry at the game as could be. Sam was engaged with a crowd of hinds in pegging out one of his birds upon the green, and in kicking a line in the turf to show where the thrower should stand, when Jeffray and the painter passed the church and came down the road leading to the village with its wood and plaster fronts, its thatched roofs and sour and ragged gardens. The sport sacred to Shrove-Tuesday had begun as Richard and the painter came down towards the green. A crowd of jabbering, hairy-faced boors were swearing and screaming on the grass. Some twenty paces distant from the crowd of hinds and slatterns, Sam Sturtevant, the cobbler, was holding one of his trained cocks by a string fastened to the leg. A rustic was in the act of taking his three shots for a penny at the bird, the object being to knock the cock down, and run and catch him before he could recover his legs. So well trained was the bird that he dodged each cast of the stick, the crowd jeering and laughing as the fellow lost his penny to the cobbler. The next gentleman was more clever in his throwing. Richard saw the bird go down on the grass, a twitching and fluttering mass of feathers. The cock recovered himself, however, before the fellow could reach him, and the stick-throwing recommenced amid the shouts of the spectators. Richard Jeffray had never seen the sport since the days when he was a mere animal of a boy. His eyes flashed in his pale face; his mouth hardened. Crossing the road with Wilson at his heels, he looked round angrily at the boors, who had abated their yelling on the Squire’s approach, and had pulled off their hats and were louting and grinning in their uncouth way. Richard went up to the cobbler, an old man with a flinty face, whose eyes were glistening over the pence his cock had earned for him. “Maybe Mr. Jeffray would like a shy,” he said, with a leer, while the hinds crowded round with grinning faces. Jeffray glanced at the bird that was staggering about on a broken leg. “Do you call this sport, men?” he asked, hotly.