"They are men without force, groundlings, the common trash from the earth with whom the best do not mingle." "But they permit the people to send royalists to the House of Burgesses." "That they do; yet there they must mingle with leet-men and indented slaves whose terms have expired," and Hugh heaved a sigh and dug his boot heel into the ground, adding, "It was not a merry day for old England when they struck off the king's head." While the young royalists were discussing politics and awaiting the arrival of the guard with Ann Linkon, the women were not all silent.
"Good wives," said a hard-featured dame of fifty, "I will tell you a piece of my mind.

It would be greatly for the public behoof, if we women being of mature age and church members in good repute like Ann Linkon might speak our minds of such baggage as Dorothe Stevens without being adjudged and sent to the ducking-stool as she is to be done.

Wherefore is Dorothe Stevens so great that one must not say ill of her that they be plunged in the pond?
Did she but have her deserts, would she be at home and Ann Linkon on the stool?
Marry! I trow not!" "Prythee, good dame Woodley, be more chary of your tongue, lest you be brought to judgment," interposed a more cautious sister.
Dame Woodley scowled and ground her teeth in silence for a short interval, and then resumed: "I speak only to you five who know the wife of John Stevens truly.
Despite all her airs and efforts to assume to herself a superiority, we know full well she hath her faults." "Verily, she hath," interposed a female who had her hood drawn low over her face to protect it from the morning sun.
"And I have heard that she does lead poor John Stevens a miserable life.
What with her extravagance, her temper, and the way she does hate his old mother whom he loves, his life must be a burden ?" continued dame Woodley, "Little the pity for him, though," interposed the woman whose weak eyes were half-hidden by her hood.
"Why say ye so, Sarah Drummond ?" "The more fool he to maintain such a creature." "Marry! think you, Sarah, that a wife is like a shoe to be cast off at will?
John Stevens hath two children, whom he loves as ardently as ever parent loved." "I have known Dorothe Stevens to be kind and gentle," interposed a woman who had not spoken before.
"Yet she is haughty, and she would have all the world believe her of superior flesh and blood to ourselves.

Doth not the Scriptures say that 'Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall'?
Yea, verily, I wish she would break her neck when she doth fall." At this moment, one of the petty officers came to the group of gossipers and cried: "Go to! hold your peace, you prating dames! The prisoner comes." A confused murmur swelled to a general hubbub as two men appeared over the hill leading between them a woman about fifty-five years of age.

She was a strong, thin-visaged woman, whose cheek had been bronzed by sun and weather.