"Yes, if need be with a stone. But I have better protection than that." "Indeed--let me hear it." "If you venture to touch me--venture to threaten any more--then I shall appeal for protection." "To whom--to Iver?" "Not to Iver," her heart boiled up, and was still again. "To whom--to Farmer Colpus?" "To the law." "The law!" jeered Jonas. "It is the law that will send you back to me." "It is the law which will protect me from you," answered Mehetabel. "I am fain to learn how." "How! I have but to go before a magistrate and tell how you tried to poison your own child--how, when that failed, you tried to smother it. And, Jonas," she added--as she saw his face grow ashen, and a foam bubble form on his lips--"and, Jonas," she stepped forward, and he backed--his glassy eyes on her face, "and, Jonas," she said, "look here, I have this stone. With the like of this you sought to kill me in the moor." She raised it above her head, "you would-be murderer of your wife and your child--I am free from you." She took another step forward--he reeled back and vanished--disappeared instantly from her sight with a scream--instantly and absolutely, as when the earth opened its mouth at the word of Moses and swallowed up Korah. CHAPTER XLIV. AGAIN: IRONSTONE. Mehetabel heard shouts, exclamations, and saw Thomas Rocliffe and his son, Samuel, come up over the stile from the lane, and James Colpus running towards her. What had happened? Whither had Jonas vanished? She drew back and passed her hand, still holding the ironstone, over her face. Then she saw Thomas and Samuel stoop, kneel, and Thomas swing himself down and also disappear; thereupon up came the farmer. "What is it? Has he fallen in--into the kiln?" That the reader may understand what had occurred, it is necessary that a few words of explanation should be given. At the time when the country was densely wooded with oaks, then the farmers were wont annually to draw chalk from the quarries in the flank of the Hog's Back, that singular ridge, steep as a Gothic roof, running east and west from Guildford, and to cart this to their farms. On each of these was a small brick kiln, constructed in a sand-bank beside a lane, so that the chalk and fuel might be thrown in from above, where the top of the kiln was level with the field, and the burnt quicklime drawn out below and shovelled into a cart that would convey it by the road to whatever field was thought to require such a dressing. But fuel became scarce, and when the trees had vanished, then sea coal was introduced. Thereupon the farmers found it more convenient to purchase quicklime at the kiln mouth near the chalk quarry, than to cart the chalk and burn it themselves.