All classes were there, from the nobility and gentry, on horseback and in great coaches in which they carried their own provisions, to the meaner sort who had trudged from all the country round on foot, and those who had not brought their own food and beer were catered for by traders in carts.

The crowd was a hilarious one, and no doubt that grand picnic on the beacon was the talk of they country for a generation or longer.

The two wretches having been hanged in chains on one gibbet were left to be eaten by ravens, crows, and magpipes, and dried by sun and winds, until, after long years, the swinging, creaking skeletons with their chains on fell to pieces and were covered with the turf, but the gibbet itself was never removed.
Then a strange thing happened.

The sheep on a neighbouring farm became thin and sickly and yielded little wool and died before their time.

No remedies availed and the secret of their malady could not be discovered; but it went on so long that the farmer was threatened with utter ruin.