"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? To return to the Punch-Bowl would be to enter on ignoble broils, and to run the gauntlet of a whole clique united to sting, wound, bruise her to death. How could she carry on the necessary business of the farm when obstructed in every way? How manage her domestic affairs, without some little assistance from outside, which would be refused her? She entertained no resentment against Iver Verstage for having excluded her from the inn, but a sense of humiliation at having ventured to seek his help unsolicited. Surely she had an excuse. He had always been to her the one to whom her thoughts turned in confidence and in hope. It was in him and through him that all happiness was to be found. He had professed the sincerest attachment to her. He had sought her out at the Punch-Bowl, when she shrank from him; and had she not been sacrificed--her whole life blighted for his sake? Surely, if he thought anything of her, if he had any spark of affection lingering in his heart for her, any care for her future, he would never leave her thus desolate, friendless, houseless!