and I held was clay cold."

A chill ran through Mehetabel's veins. She said, "There is some
truth in it, Iver. You hold a dead girl by the hand. To you, I am,
I must be, forever--dead."

"Nonsense. All will come right somehow."

"Yes, Iver," she said; "it will so. You are free and will go
about, and will see and love and marry a girl worthy of you in
every way. As for me, my lot is cast in the Punch-Bowl. No power
on earth can separate me from Bideabout. I have made my bed and
must lie on it, though it be one of thorns. There is but one
thing for us both--we must part and meet no more."

"Matabel," he put forth his hand in protest.

"I have spoken plainly," she said, "because there is no good in
not doing so. Do not make my part more difficult. Be a man--go."

"Matabel! It shall not be, it cannot be! My love! My only one."

He tried to grasp her.

She sprang from the settle. A mist formed before her eyes. She
groped for something by which to stay herself.

He seized her by the waist. She wrenched herself free.

"Let me go!" she cried. "Let me go!"

She spoke hoarsely. Her eyes were staring as if she saw a spirit.
She staggered back beyond his reach, touched the jambs of the
door, grasped them with a grasp of relief. Then, actuated by a
sudden thought, turned and fled from the room, from the house.

Iver stood for a minute bewildered. Her action had been so
unexpected that he did not know what to think, what to do.

He went to the porch and looked up the road, then down it, and did
not see her.

Mrs. Verstage, came out. "Where is Matabel?" she asked, uneasily.

"Gone!" said Iver. "Mother--gone!"

CHAPTER XXI.

THOR'S STONE.

Mehetabel ran, neither along the way that led in the direction of
Portsmouth, nor along that to Godalming, but to the Moor.

"The Moor," is the marsh land that lies at the roots of the
sandstone heights that culminate in Hind Head, Leith Hill, and
the Devil's Jumps. As already said, the great mass of Bagshot sand
lies upon a substratum of clay. The sand drinks in every drop of
rain that falls on the surface. This percolates through it till
it reaches the clay, which refuses to absorb it, or let it sink
through to other beds. Thereupon the accumulated water breaks
forth in springs at the base of the hills, and forms a wide tract
of morass, interspersed with lagoons that teem with fish and wild
fowl. This region is locally known as "Moor," in contradistinction
to the c