ed across the floor. Cockroaches came
out in the darkness and stirred, making a strange rustling like
the pattering of fine rain.

Mehetabel could hear the voice of her husband in the yard. He was
thrusting the cart under a roof. He would be in the house shortly,
and she did not wish that he should find her in tears, that he
should learn how weak, how hopeless she was.

She put her hand into her pocket for a kerchief, and drew forth
one, with which she staunched the flow from her eyes, and dried
her cheeks. She put her knuckle to her lips to stay their quivering.
Then, when she had recovered some composure, she drew a long sigh
and replaced the sodden kerchief in her pocket.

At that moment she started, sprang to her feet, searched her pocket
in the darkness with tremulous alarm, with sickness at her heart.

Then, not finding what she wanted, she stooped and groped along
the floor, and found nothing save the flakes of fallen whitewash.

She stood up panting, and put her hand to her heart. Then Jonas
entered with a lantern, and saw her as she thus stood, one hand
to her brow, thrusting back the hair, the other to her heart; he
was surprised, raised his lantern to throw the light on her face,
and said:--"Wot's up?"

"I have been robbed! My fifteen pounds have been taken from me."

"Well I--"

"Jonas!" she said, "I know it was you. It was you who robbed me,
where those men robbed my father. Just as I got into the cart you
robbed me."

He lowered the lantern.

"Look here, Matabel, mind wot I said. In matrimony it's all give
and take, and if there ain't give on one side, then there's take,
take on the t'other. I ain't going to have this no Paradise if I
can help it."

CHAPTER XV.

IVER.

Next day was bright; but already some rime lay in the cold and
marshy bottom of the Punch-Bowl.

Mehetabel went round the farm with Bideabout, and with some pride
he showed her his possessions, his fields, his barn, sheds and
outhouses. Amongst these was that into which she had been taken
on the night of her father's murder.

She had often heard the story from Iver. She knew how that every
door had been shut against her except that of the shed in which
the heather and broom steels were kept that belonged to Jonas, and
which served as his workshop.

With a strange sense, as though she were in the hands of Fate
thrusting her on, she knew not whither, with remorseless cogency,
the young wife looked into the dark