Within the hour the party was ready to set off, two of the Dutchmen carrying the baggage (except certain small boxes, which the doctor would not entrust to other hands), and the other three men with muskets, cutlasses, and pistols, going in front. Then came the doctor and Vliet, Anna and I last. As the landing-place, where they had left their boat in charge of one of their number, was not more than half a mile away, I hastened to take up the thread of our previous talk, but was baulked of my intent. At a spot where three roads met we encountered a crowd "riding the stang." At the head of the procession strode a fellow blowing a horn; then a dozen others, beating pans and kettles with pokers and iron spoons; a bagpiper made a noise like pigs in a storm; a ragged rascal, sitting a donkey, carried a pole on which dangled a woman's smock. After this standard bearer followed an old horse, bestridden by a grinning woman, who held an enormous ladle, with which she merrily belaboured her husband, who rode behind her, his face turned to the horse's tail, pretending to work at a distaff. Two lads marched behind the couple on horseback, bearing a pole, on which rode a third, thumping a pan, and repeating-- "With a ran, tan, tan, On my old tin can, Mrs. Mooley and her good man, She banged him, she banged him, For spending a penny when he stood in need. She up with a three-footed stool; She struck him so hard, and cut him so deep, Till the blood ran down like a new-stuck sheep." A shouting, jeering rabble accompanied the cavalcade, making uproar with marrow-bones and cleavers, tongs, gridirons, and kettles, and 'some half-score of barking and yelping curs swelled the din. A prominent figure in the rout was Ducker's wife, who had gone crazy through the loss of her child. She skipped and screamed and laughed, now here, now there, almost as much the object of amusement to the mob as the henpecked husband and his shrew of a wife. If the mad woman caught sight of Anna there would be trouble, I felt sure; so I pushed on, hoping to avoid touch with the crowd, who would most likely turn by the road we had come, to make the circuit of the town. But the spectacle had some attraction for Vliet, who stood to see the crowd go by, saying with a laugh, "Ah! justitia de los cornudos!" from which I surmised he had seen the riding of the stang in Spain.