midnight
No ; they , with the rest of the villagers , laid all the blame upon the stocks . It was not to be expected that a lad of such exemplary character could be thrust into that place of ignominy , and not be sensible to the affront . And who , in the whole village , was safe , if such goings-on and puttings-in were to be tolerated in silence , and at the expense of the very best and quietest lad the village had ever known ? Thus , a few days after the widow 's departure , the stocks was again the object of midnight desecration : it was bedaubed and bescratched , it was hacked and hewed , it was scrawled over with pithy lamentations for Lenny , and laconic execrations on tyrants . Night after night new inscriptions appeared , testifying the sarcastic wit and the vindictive sentiment of the parish . And perhaps the stocks was only spared from axe and bonfire by the convenience it afforded to the malice of the disaffected : it became the Pasquin of Hazeldean . As disaffection naturally produces a correspondent vigour in authority , so affairs had been lately administered with greater severity than had been hitherto wont in the easy rule of the squire and his predecessors .