d the Moor, Mehetabel ran among sheets of gold,
leaped ribbons of shining metal, danced among golden filagree--the
reflection of the orb in the patches, channels, frets of water.
She sprang from one dark tuft of rushes to another; she ran
along the ridges of the sand. She skipped where the surface
was treacherous. What mattered it to her if she missed her footing,
sank, and the ooze closed over her? As well end so a life that
could never be other than long drawn agony.

Before leaving the heath, she had stooped and picked up a stone.
It was a piece of hematite iron, such as frequently occurs in the
sand, liver-shaped, and of the color of liver.

She required a hammer, wherewith to knock on Thor's anvil, and
make her necessities known, and this piece of iron would serve
her purpose.

Frogs were croaking, a thousand natterjacks were whirring like
the nightjar. Strange birds screamed and rushed out of the trees
as she sped along. White moths, ghostlike, wavered about her,
mosquitoes piped. Water-rats plunged into the pools.

As a child she had been familiar with Pudmoor, and instinctively
she walked, ran, only where her foot could rest securely.

A special Providence, it is thought, watches over children and
drunkards. It watches also over such as are drunk with trouble,
it holds them up when unable to think for themselves, it holds
them back when they court destruction.

To this morass, Mehetabel had come frequently with Iver, in days
long gone by, to hunt the natterjack and the dragon-fly, to look
for the eggs of water fowl, and to pick marsh flowers.

As she pushed on, a thin mist spread over portions of the "Moor."
It did not lie everywhere, it spared the sand, it lay above the
water, but in so delicate a film as to be all but imperceptible.
It served to diffuse the moonlight, to make a halo of silver
about the face of the orb, when looked up to by one within the
haze, otherwise it was scarcely noticeable.

Mehetabel ran with heart bounding and with fevered brain, and yet
with her mind holding tenaciously to one idea.

After a while, and after deviations from the direct course, rendered
necessary by the nature of the country she traversed, Mehetabel
reached Thor's Stone, that gleamed white in the moonbeam beside a
sheet of water, the Mere of the Pucksies. This mere had the mist
lying on it more dense than elsewhere. The vapor rested on the
surface as a fine gossamer veil, not raised above a couple of feet,