Without loss of time, and with but little ceremony, the executioners went about their business, heedless of the cries of the women, and the piteous appeals for mercy from the handsome peasant girl.
Soon the preparations were complete; the well-dressed, officious-looking personage drew forth a document, and proceeded to read aloud the details of the crime for which the poor wretch had to suffer death—shooting at and killing deer in his lordship’s forest of Longdendale—a crime of so serious a nature in the eyes of the authorities of that day that nothing less than the death of the offender could atone for the sin. The reading being ended, the reader nodded to the executioners, and they made as though to carry out the sentence forthwith.
But at this juncture a diversion was created, for the young woman who had hitherto so persistently and closely hung upon the steps of the guard, burst through the ring and threw herself upon her knees before the lord’s representative.
“Mercy, mercy, Master Steward! Thou canst save him yet; and it is such a little crime. What is one deer from the forest against the life of a good man? He but shot the deer because I—his wife—and his child needed food. And if thou sparest his life we will work, and more than doubly make up the loss to his lordship.”
The steward—a dark man of evil countenance—looked at the girl for a moment, and hesitated; then he caught the eye of the prisoner, and instantly his face grew stern.
“Get thee gone, thou baggage,” said he, spurning the female. “Stop her mouth, some of you; or, if she will scream, take her to the ducking stool.”
Then, turning to the hangman, he curtly said:
“Do your work.”
With a wild cry of despair, the girl sprang up, leaped towards the condemned man, flung her arms about his neck, and kissed him, and then, before any could stop her, burst from the crowd and fled, shrieking and laughing, over the wastes of the hills. In another moment the prisoner was dangling in the air, and before the night fell the gibbet at Gallow’s Clough held the ghastly form of a dead man swinging in chains.