in his eyes.

There is something hideous about the ducking-stool in the present age of
reason and enlightenment, more especially as it was designed to punish
the weaker sex and usually those advanced in years. Before the ugly
machine and between it and the road which ran past the pond to the
village was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed,
plantain and such unsightly vegetation, which seemed to find something
congenial in the soil that bore an instrument for the torture of the
gentler sex; but on one side of the post and leaning against it was a
wild rosebush covered with fragrant flowers.

It was still an early hour, for the morning dew sparkled in the deeper
recesses of the grand old forest, and the moisture of dawn yet lingered
on the air. Strange as it may seem, that instrument was regarded with
careless indifference, even by the gentler sex of this period.

Meagre and cold was the sympathy which a transgressor might expect from
the assembly at the pond. The women mingled freely with the crowd and
appeared to take a peculiar interest in the punishment about to be
inflicted. The age had not so much refinement, that any sense of
impropriety kept the wearers of petticoats and farthingales from
elbowing their way through the densest throngs to witness the
executions. Those wives and maidens of English birth and breeding were
morally and materially of coarser fibre than their fair descendants, who
would swoon at the thought of torture and punishment. They were not all
hard-featured amazons in that throng, for, mingled with the stout,
broad-shouldered dames, were maids naturally shy, timid and beautiful.
The ruddy cheeks and ruby lips indicated health, and the brawny arms of
many women bore evidence of physical toil.