"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."