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. Then, by
chance, it was discovered that the chains in which the
murderers had been hanged had been thrown by some evil-minded
person into a dew-pond on the farm. This was taken to be the
cause of the malady in the sheep; at all events, the chains
having been taken out of the pond and buried deep in the
earth, the flock recovered: it was supposed that the person
who had thrown the chains in the water to poison it had done
so to ruin the farmer in revenge for some injustice or grudge.
But even now we are not quite done with the gibbet! Many,
many years had gone by when Inkpen discovered from old
documents that their little dishonest neighbour, Coombe, had
taken more land than she was entitled to, that not only a part
but the whole of that noble hill-top belonged to her! It was
Inkpen's turn to chuckle now; but she chuckled too soon, and
Coombe, running out to look, found the old rotten stump of the
gibbet still in the ground.
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