‘Last night,’ she said, ‘he dragged me round the room by the hair of my head; this morning he knocked me down with his fist; and last Sunday, after church, he kicked me off my chair; yesterday fortnight he beat me with a poker——’
‘Lies! lies!! LIES!!!’ cried Susan. ‘Tom say they are lies.’
Tom shook his head but spoke never a word.
‘Tom!’ she cried again, ‘they will take you to prison; say they are lies.’
Then he spoke.
‘I would rather go to prison.’
‘Don’t believe her,’ Susan cried. ‘Don’t believe her. Why, she’s got no hair to be pulled.... Don’t ... Oh! oh! oh!’
She burst into an agony of weeping.
The women clamoured round the group,—some for justice, because wife-beating is an awful sin; some for mercy, because this woman was in her fits of wrath a most notorious liar, and not a soul believed her accusations.
It was in the midst of this altercation that there arrived on the scene, from opposite points, Lord Chester with Harry, and two of the rural police.