e Bowl, and the ruts are deep."

"Get up, I say. There is no occasion to be afraid. It won't do
to drive among our folk, to our own door, me alone, and you
trudgin', totterin' behind. Get up, I say."

Mehetabel obeyed.

There was a fragrance of fern in the night air that she had inhaled
while walking. Now by the side of Bideabout she smelt only the
beer and stale tobacco that adhered to his clothes.

"I am main glad," said he, "that all the hustle-bustle is over.
I'm glad I'm not wed every day. Fust and last time I hopes. The
only good got as I can see, is a meal and drink at the landlord's
expense. But he'll take it out of me someways, sometime. Folks
ain't liberal for nuthin'. 'Tain't in human nature."

"It is very dark in the Punch-Bowl," said Mehetabel. "I do not see
a glimmer of a light anywhere."

"That's becos the winders ain't looking this way. You don't suppose
it would be a pleasure to have three dead men danglin' in the wind
afore their eyes all day long. The winders look downward, or else
there's a fold of the hill or trees between. But I know where
every house is wi'out seeing 'em. There's the Nashes', there's
the Boxalls', there's the Snellings', there's my brother-in-law's,
Thomas Rocliffe's, and down there be I."

He pointed with his whip. Mehetabel could distinguish nothing
beyond the white favor bound to his whip.

"We're drivin to Paradise," said Jonas. And as to this remark she
made no response, he explained--"Married life, you know."

She said nothing.

"It rather looks as if we were going down to the other place," he
observed, with a sarcastic laugh. "But there it is, one or the
other--all depends on you. It's just as you make it; as likely to
be one as the other. Give me that fifteen pounds--and Paradise is
the word."

"Indeed, Jonas, do you not understand that I cannot go against
father's will and my word?"

The road, or rather track, descended along the steep side of the
Punch-Bowl, notched into the sand falling away rapidly on the left
hand, on which side sat Mehetabel.

At first she had distinguished nothing below in the blackness, but
now something like a dead man's eye looked out of it, and seemed
to follow and observe her.

"What is that yonder?" she asked.

"Wot is wot?" he asked in reply.

"That pale white light--that round thing glimmerin' yonder?"

"There's water below," was his explanation of the phenomenon.

In fact that which had attracted her attention and s