As I did so,
the man yelled, "God damn, I'm on fire!" and the woman shrieked back,
"Burn, you foul devil, burn, and be damned!"
This was enough, and I burst in on a spectacle, strange, serious, on the
point of becoming terrible, and yet almost laughable. In the middle of the
room, a stout, shock-headed, red-elbowed woman stood, a pikel in her
strong outstretched hands. The sergeant of dragoons, with his back to a
roaring fire, was pinned against the hearthstead by the pitchfork, the
tines of which were stuck in the oak lintel of the chimney-piece, so that
a ring of steel encircled his throat like the neckhole of a pillory, and
held him there helpless and roasting. When I first caught sight of him he
was making a frenzied attempt to wrench the prongs out, but, finding it
hopeless, drew his tuck, and lashed out at the woman. She calmly shifted
out of reach along the handle of the fork. He then hacked fiercely but
without much effect on the wooden handle, and finally, in his despair and
agony, poised the tuck and cast it at her javelin-fashion. The woman,
cooler than he in both senses of the term, dodged it easily.
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