ne summer's day in the year 1805, a farmer's wife, carrying a heavy basket of eggs, was slowly trudging along a lane leading to the market town, when a woman ran hastily to her, calling out as she passed, 'You are in luck to-day, Mrs. Hodge! Eggs are so scarce that you can ask any price you like.'

'Why is that?' asked Mrs. Hodge, surprised.

'Why?' laughed the woman. 'Because every one wants them! A man has just been put in the pillory for speaking against the King, or the Parliament, I don't rightly know which; but at any rate he is safe in the pillory, and folk are having rare fun pelting him,' and the woman passed on to join in what she called 'the fun!'

Mrs. Hodge, however, was a woman of a different sort. 'I will sell none of my eggs for such cruel work as that,' she said resolutely. 'Sooner, by far, would I take the whole lot back unsold, that I would, than ill-treat an unfortunate man in that way.'

She had now reached the market-place, and there, on a platform raised several feet above the ground, stood a wide wooden post, with three round holes in it, through which appeared a man's head and his two hands. Thus imprisoned and utterly unable to protect himself in any way, he furnished sport for a thoughtless, cruel mob, who were aiming at him with rotten eggs, cabbage-stalks, and any rubbish that came to hand.

Mrs. Hodge's blood boiled with indignation as she saw the terror and agony in the poor man's eyes, as missile after missile hit him, each hit being greeted with a shout of delight from the populace.

'Shame on you!' cried the honest woman, and hastily leaving her basket at a shop-door, she somehow pushed her way through the masses, and climbing the platform, stood right in front of the pillory. 'Shame on you all, to hit a helpless man!' she cried again.

'Get down! get down!' shouted the mob, furious at any one interfering with their fun. 'Get down, or we will treat you the same!'

'More shame to you,' said the dauntless woman. 'I shall not leave for all your threats! Surely there will be one amongst you all who will not see a helpless man tortured.'

'But he is a bad man. He was trying to set folk against the Government. He deserves to be punished!' was shouted by different voices in the crowd.

'If he has done wrong he is being punished for it,' said the woman firmly, still continuing to shelter the man by standing before him. 'It is bad enough for him to stand all day in the pillory under this broiling sun, without having his eyes blinded and his nose broken. We shall all, maybe, want a friend one day, so let us help this poor fellow now. Here, Ralph,' she continued, catching the eye of the chief leader of the rioting, 'you said, when I saved you from bleeding to death in the hay-field last summer, that you owed me a good turn. Pay it me now! Leave this poor fellow alone, and get your friends to do the same.'

The man stood irresolute one minute; then his feeling of gratitude conquered him, and he said, half-sheepishly, 'Have your own way, Mother! I will see that no one throws any more at him.'

'That is right, Ralph,' said Mrs. Hodge, heartily, for she knew that Ralph's influence was great. 'Now for a pail of fresh water, and let me see if I cannot get all this dirt off this poor fellow's face and hair.'

'Thank you, Missis, you have been real good to me,' the man said, hoarsely. 'I could never have stood it much longer.'

The mob—fickle as mobs so often are—were now as ready to help as before to injure, and instead of jeering and reviling, there were now those who remarked that 'perhaps the chap was no worse than the rest of us,' whilst others were glad they had been stopped in time, for only a few weeks before a man had been killed, whilst standing in the pillory, by those who were only 'amusing' themselves in much the same fashion as folk on that day.

One of the crowd fetched water, and a woman brought a mug of milk, which was sweet as nectar to the poor man's parched throat, and now, though he had still many hours before sundown to stand in the pillory, yet it was shorn of its chief terror, as Ralph undertook to shield him from all further injury.

So he once more thanked Mrs. Hodge, and she returned to her eggs with a mind at ease.

It may surprise our readers to know that the punishment of the pillory remained on the Statute-book of this country until the year 1837, though it had practically fallen into disuse for many years before it was repealed.

The pillory came down to us from Anglo-Saxon times, and there was a law passed in the reign of Henry III., ordering every village to set up a pillory when required for bakers who used false weights, perjurers, and so on.

Clarendon.