, that
she'll never go there again. There was the sexton at the corner,
and he helped Betty with her bag, he said he turned Matabel out of
the church porch."

"Then she may be in the churchyard."

"Oh, no, he turned her out of the churchyard, and the last he seed
of her was goin' down to the Pudmoor. If she's queer in her head,
or driven distracted wi' trouble--she oughtn't to be allowed to go
there."

"Gone to Pudmoor!" exclaimed Iver. "I shouldn't wonder if she has
sought Thor's Stone. She did that once before."

"I'll clap old Clutch in the stable, then go and look for her. Will
you come, Mr. Iver?"

"Well--yes--but she cannot be received in here."

"No, there is no need. Betty Chivers will take her in as before.
Betty expects her. I told her as we comed along that Matabel were
before us, and we almost expected every minute to take her up.
Though how we should ha' managed three in the trap I don't know,
and Clutch would have been in an outrageous temper. Do you hear
him snortin' there? That's because he's angry--the Radical!"

Beside Thor's Stone Iver and Joe Filmer found Mehetabel rocking her
child, she had bared her bosom and held the little corpse against
her palpitating heart, in the desperate hope of communicating to
it some of her own heat; and if love could have given life the baby
would have revived.

Again, as when her husband died, her brain was for a while unhinged,
but she had the same kind and suitable nurse, the widow, Betty
Chivers.

And now this story is all but done. Little more remains to be told.

Never again did Mehetabel return to the Punch-Bowl--never revisit
it. The little property was sold, and after the debts of Jonas were
paid, what remained went for her sustenance, as well as the money
bequeathed by Susanna Verstage and that laid aside by Simon.

Years passed. Betty Chivers was gathered to the dust and in her
place Mehetabel kept the Dame's school. It was thought that Joe
Filmer had his eye on her, and on more than one occasion he dressed
himself in his Sunday best and walked towards the school, but his
courage ebbed away before he reached it, and he never said that
which he had resolved to say.

On the north side of the church, near the monument of the murdered
sailor, was a tiny mound, ever adorned with flowers, or when
flowers were unattainable, with sprigs of holly and butcher's broom
set with scarlet berries. At the beginning of the present century
the decoration of a