cry. She had no witnesses, and the bruises of which she made
complaint had disappeared, and there were no women present to make
common cause with the sex. Still, however, the general feeling was
against Master Weston; and it would have gone hard with him when he
was called in, if a most unexpected witness had not risen up in his
favour. His wife had brought in her arms a little girl about
eighteen months old, partly perhaps to move compassion in her
favour; for a woman with a child in her arms is always an object
that excites kind feelings. The little girl had looked shy and
frightened, and had been as quiet as a lamb during her mother's
examination; but she no sooner saw her father, from whom she had
been a fortnight separated, than she clapped her hands, and laughed,
and cried, 'Daddy! daddy!' and sprang into his arms, and hung round
his neck, and covered him with kisses--again shouting, 'Daddy, come
home! daddy! daddy!'--and finally nestled her little head in his
bosom, with a fulness of contentment, an assurance of tenderness and
protection such as no wife-beating tyrant ever did inspire, or ever
could inspire, since the days of King Solomon. Our magistrates
acted in the very spirit of the Jewish monarch: they accepted the
evidence of nature, and dismissed the complaint. And subsequent
events have fully justified their decision; Mistress Weston proving
not only renowned for the feminine accomplishment of scolding
(tongue-banging, it is called in our parts, a compound word which
deserves to be Greek), but is actually herself addicted to
administering the conjugal discipline, the infliction of which she
was pleased to impute to her luckless husband.

Now we cross the stile, and walk up the fields to the Shaw. How
beautifully green this pasture looks! and how finely the evening sun
glances between the boles of that clump of trees, beech, and ash,