The continual neighing of horses in the woods told of the arrival of fresh troops of planters and fox-hunting cavaliers.
The merry cavalier was easily distinguished from the sedate Puritan.

The latter gazed solemnly on the instrument of torture as a thing essential to the performance of a duty, while the cavaliers seemed to have come more for the enjoyment of some rare sport, than to witness an execution of the law.

Occasionally a snake-eyed aborigine mingled with the throng, gazing in wonder on the scene, or a negro, granted a half-holiday, stood grinning with barbarous delight on what was more sport than punishment 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.