Osmund stood patiently in the pillory in the middle of Great Meadow. In the year and more of this travelling up and down in England he had not infrequently tasted treatment in this like. Sometimes it had been better, sometimes worse. He was glad that this time it was not imprisonment. The festering gaols were the worst things. At no time was there sense in flinching or being melancholy. So he put off shuddering of flesh and dismalness of mind. Pinioned there he was not unhappy. In Great Meadow, even, he had in part said his say. It might live, that seed, bearing fruit when he was dead and gone. A day would come when many more than he would see that freedom and follow it simply. Just as there were many freedoms that Richard Osmund could not yet see, but would one day see.... His spirit stood light and steady. He had much to think of, much to remember, he had faith, hope, and charity, he had vision.
The first hour went by, the second was not far from being gone. The spectacle was become trite to Great Meadow. The chaffering, the buying and selling, had long been resumed. Only now and then came a wave toward the pillory. One or two or more persons might linger about, staring, silent or abusive, but compared with the first half-hour there was solitude. Osmund stood as though he were chained to a desert rock. Houses, booths, the square church tower dissolved in light. There rolled a golden desert, there quivered tops of palm trees.
Came by the thatcher’s cousin, the woman of a darkness mixed with rose. Most women passed the pillory quickly, with heads turned aside or down bent. This woman stood still, her hands straight by her sides, her head lifted. Her eyes gazed into Osmund’s eyes. Then came between a drift of idle folk. When he could see beyond them, she had vanished. There rolled the golden desert, there waved the fronds of palm.
The second hour was over, the third hour fast waning. It ebbed, it went away with a ringing of church bells. Here now were the constable and his helpers. As the church bells clanged, great part of Great Meadow turned from market and other business to see Richard Osmund put out of town.
Great Meadow was not so great that it was far to its outermost confine. Many hands upon him, with gibes and abusive laughter, Osmund was thrust by the green, by the chief street, toward the town edge. It was the rim opposite the rim through which he had entered. He had been deep into Great Meadow; that which he taught had perhaps traced a path, a faint guiding line, making easier the next treading. Men could push out that which they called Richard Osmund, but to push out what mind has brought into mind—that is a different thing! They thrust along Osmund’s body. Here was the edge of Great Meadow and beyond these last houses a barren, uneven field with a ragged copse by a thread of a stream, and across all went the westward stretching high road.
And here too was a black cloud with harm in its bosom. A part of this throng had come along with constable and prisoner, and a part had dropped employment merely to see what was to be seen, streaming out, men and women, from the various ways and lanes, and a part, when the hour struck, had hurried out ahead into the wild field that mounted here to the hill and descended there to the river. And this last group had furnished itself with sticks and stones. The constable loosened his hold of Osmund. “Now you’re out of Great Meadow bounds! My duty by you is done. Trudge!”
The constable turned his back. As if to get the law out of the way, he drew off with his helpers. Osmund shook himself, took breath, and made to step soberly forward upon the onward going road. He saw the dark third of Great Meadow with its sticks and stones and knew that the law did not mean at once or soon to interfere.
The sun stood low in the west. A faint red light lay like a veil over earth. That part of Great Meadow gathered here without great malice, or without malice at all, hung a moment, then began to dissolve into the village. Arose an uncertain murmur with, more loudly, voices and counter-voices. A young man, too often at the Green Wreath, lifting a ragged staff, struck Osmund. An older man behind him cried with a bull voice: “Who says woman is equal with man denies Scripture! Among men and women only witches and wizards have equal learning and power! Be sure he is a wizard and leads a lewd and fearful life!” With that the storm broke. The hesitants, men and a few women, stiffened, stayed to see what would do the dark core of the mob.
Out of this fringe of spectators came a woman. She did not come slowly, she came swiftly. Osmund, beaten by stave and fist to his knee, found her beside him, the woman of the thatcher’s cottage.... Around and around, suddenly again, stretched wide space, wide, clear and golden. Above and below time changed into eternity. Form, frame and tissue seemed to move, expand. It was as if two released spirits met in a larger world.... Then, with a thunder clap, here was the close to-day and a hand’s-breadth of English field.
He rose beside her. “Ah, the great cowards!” she cried. “Ah, the wrong for so long that the wish for the right must be reborn! Ah, men! And ah, you women who are here! Ah, you women, you greater cowards! Ah, women, women! you and I—cowards, cowards!—But now will I turn on Fear!”