At the eastern end of the main street of the village the bridge across the Susquehanna River commands a view for a short distance up and down the stream, far enough toward the north to glimpse its source in Otsego Lake, while to the south Fernleigh House appears, high amid the trees on the western bank, and the drifting current below is lost in foliage. Nearer at hand, as seen from the south side of the bridge, Riverbrink claims the eastern shore. Here stands a solemn-visaged house that looks down upon the scene of one of the most extraordinary dramas ever enacted beneath the gallows-tree. [Illustration: RIVERBRINK] In the summer of 1805, on the flat a little below the place where the house now stands, the gibbet was erected for a public execution. The condemned man was Stephen Arnold, whose crime was committed in Burlington, in this county, during the previous winter. Arnold was a school teacher, and having no children of his own, had taken into his home Betsey Van Amburgh, a child six years of age. An ungovernable temper added a kind of ferocious zeal to the duty of educating this child, for it was her inability to pronounce the word "gig" according to his directions that brought the teacher to the gallows. Betsey insisted on pronouncing the word as "jig," and declared that she could not do otherwise. Whereupon Arnold took her out of the house into the severely cold evening air, and there whipped her naked body until he himself became cold. He then took her indoors to make her pronounce the word correctly, which she failed to do; and again she was taken out and whipped in the same manner. This act of brutality he repeated seven times, declaring that he "had as lieve whip her to death as not." The poor child languished four days, and expired. Arnold's trial was held in June, in Cooperstown. He was speedily convicted of murder, and sentenced to die. The date fixed for the execution, Friday, July 19, 1805, was a gala day in Cooperstown. The infamy of Arnold's crime had stirred public indignation throughout this section of the State, and the prospect of witnessing his execution had been eagerly anticipated, through motives ranging from morbid curiosity to a stern sense of duty, in the most distant hamlets of the region. By seven o'clock in the morning on the day fixed for the hanging the main street of Cooperstown was filled with people who had travelled from so great a distance that not one in twenty was known to any of the villagers. The concourse increased until shortly after noon, when, in the village which normally contained about five hundred people, the crowd included about eight thousand.