e along, and choose a place. It'll save comin' again.
I'll let you see where Jonas lies. And if you want to put up a
monument, that's half-a-guinea to the passon and half-a-crown to
me. There, do you see that new grave? I've bound it down wi'
withies, and laid the turf nice over it. It's fine in the sun,
and a healthy situation," continued the sexton, pointing to a
new grave. "This bit of ground is pretty nigh taken up wi' the
folks of the Punch-Bowl, the Boxalls, and the Nashes, and the
Snellings, and the Kinks, and the Rocliffes. We let 'em lie to
themselves when dead, as they kep' to theirselves when livin'.
Where would you like to lie, you and the baby--you may just as
well choose now--it may save trouble. I'm gettin' old, and I don't
go about more than I can help.

"If anything were to happen, Mr. Linegar, then let us be laid--me
and my darling--on the other side of the church, where my father's
grave is."

"That's the north side--never gets no sun. I don't reckon it over
healthy."

"I would rather lie there. If it gets no sun on that side, my
poor babe and I have been in shade all our lives, and so it fits
us best to be on the north side."

"Well, there's no accountin for tastes," said the sexton. "But I've
hear you be a little troubled in the intellecks."

"Is it strange," answered Mehetabel, "that one should wish to be
laid beside a father--my poor father, who is alone?"

"Come, come," said the old man, "it is time for me to lock up the
churchyard gate. I only left it open because I had been doing up
Jonas Kink's grave with withies."

He made Mehetabel precede him down the path, saw her through the
gate, and then fastened that with a padlock.

"Even the dead have a home--a place of rest," she said. "I have
none. I am driven from theirs."

It was not true that she had no home, for she had one, and could
claim it by indefeasible right, the farmhouse of the Kinks in the
Punch-Bowl. But her heart revolted against a return to the scene
of the greatest sorrows. Moreover, if, as it was told her, the
Rocliffes had taken possession, then she could not enter it without
a contest, and she would have perhaps to forcibly expel them. But
even if force were not required, she was quite aware that Sally
Rocliffe would make her position intolerable. She had the means,
she could enlist the other members of the squatter community on
her side, and how could she--Mehetabel--maintain herself against
such a combination? T