World's End by Richard Jefferies

Great horror fell upon the whole neighbourhood of World's End. Not the oldest man or woman could remember such a deed in their midst. Hitherto the spectre of Murder had avoided those grand old hills. There was no memory of such a thing. The nearest approach to it, which the gossips at the Shepherd's Bush could recall to mind, had happened long before the days of the oldest of them all.

There was one, and one only, who declared that in his youth his father left him in charge of the hayfield one beautiful summer's day, to go and see a man hung on the gallows. It was the custom then to erect the gallows at, or very near, the spot where the crime was supposed to have been committed; often at the cross roads.