hinks she has drownded herself and the child. And there's Jonas
stormin', and in a purty takein'. There is my Thomas--gone with
him--and Jamaica and I come this way over the Common. But I had a
fancy you might be at the bottom o' one of them Hammer Ponds. I
was told you'd been to the silk mill."

"What be you run away for? What be you a hidin' for--just like a
wild beast?" asked Giles Cheel.

Mehetabel could not answer. How could she declare her reason? That
the life of the child was menaced by its own father.

"Now come back with us," said Jamaica, in a persuasive tone.

"I will not. I never will return," exclaimed Mehetabel with energy.
She was kneeling, with her hands extended to screen her child from
the eye of Sally Rocliffe.

"I told you so, did I not?" asked the woman.

"She sed as much to me yesterday mornin when I saw her run away."

"I will not go back. I will never go back," repeated Mehetabel

"Where is the child?" asked Sally.

"It is behind me."

"How is it?"

"It is well now, now we are out of the Punch-Bowl, where all hate
it and wish it dead."

"Now, look here, Matabel," said Cheel, "you be reasonable, and come
peaceably."

"I will not go back; I never will!" she answered with increased
vehemence.

"That's all very fine sayin'," pursued Giles Cheel. "But go back
you must when Jonas fetches you."

"I will not go back! Never! never!"

"He'll make you."

"Not if I will not go."

"Aye, but he can. If you won't go when he axes, he can get the
constable to force you to go home. The law of the land can help
him thereto."

"I will not go back! Never!"

"Where he is just now, I can't say," pursued Cheel. "But I have a
notion he's prowlin' about the moor, thinkin' you may have gone to
Thor's Stone. Come he will, and he'll take you and the baby, and
you may squeal and scratch, go back with him you must and will. So
I say go peaceable."

"I will not go back!" cried Mehetabel. She picked up a lump of
ironstone and said, passionately, "I will defend myself. I am as
strong as he. I am stronger, for I will fight for my child. I will
kill him rather than let him take my baby from me."

"Hear her!" exclaimed Sally Rocliffe. "She threatens she'll do
for Jonas. Every one knows she tried that on once afore, wi' his
gun."

"Yes," said Mehetabel, fiercely, "I will even do that. Rather than
go back and have my baby in that hated place again, I will fight
and kill him. Let him come here and try