ed, inasmuch as the difficulties and dangers
attending a visit to Thor's Stone reduced the number of those
seeking superhuman assistance in their difficulties. Courage was
requisite in one who ventured to the Moor at night, and made a
way to the iron-stone block, over tracts of spongy morass, among
lines of stagnant ooze, through coppices of water-loving willows
and straggling brier. This, which was difficult by day, was
dangerous in a threefold degree at night. Moreover, the Moor was
reputed to be haunted by spirits, shadows that ran and leaped,
and peered and jabbered; and Puck wi' the lantern flickered over
the surface of the festering bog.

If, then, the visits to Thor's Stone were not so many as to
the stone on Borough Hill, this was due less to the waning of
superstition than to the difficulties attending an expedition
to the former. Without considering what she was doing, moved by
a blind impulse, Mehetabel ran in the direction of Puck's Moor.

And yet the impulse was explicable. She had often thought over
the tales told of visits to the habitation of the "Good Folk"
on Borough Hill, and the transfer of the pilgrimage to Thor's
Stone. She had, of late, repeatedly asked herself whether, by a
visit thither, she might not gain what lay at her heart--an
innocent desire--none other than that Iver should depart.

Now that he had made open show of his passion, that all concealment
was over between them, every veil and disguise plucked away--now
she felt that her strength was failing her, and it would fail
completely if subjected to further trial.

One idea, like a spark of fire shooting through her brain, alone
possessed her at this moment. Her safety depended on one thing--the
removal of Iver. Let him go! Let him go! then she could bear her
lot. Let her see him no more! then she would be able to bring
her truant heart under discipline. Otherwise her life would be
unendurable, her tortured brain would give way, her overtaxed
heart would break.

She found no stay for her soul in the knowledge where was situated
the country of the Gergesenes, no succor in being well drilled
in the number of chapters in Genesis. She turned desperately, in
her necessity, to Thor's Stone, to the spirits--what they were
she knew not--who aided those in need, and answered petitions
addressed to them.

The night had already set in, but a full golden moon hung in the
sky, and the night was in no way dark and dreadful.

When she reache