"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."
She set her teeth, her eyes glared, her breath came snorting through her nostrils.
"I say, Gilly, I'll go back. It ain't safe here. She's possessed with seven devils."
"I am not possessed, save with mother's love. I will never, never go back and take my babe to the Punch-Bowl. Never, never, allow you, Sally, to look at its innocent face again, nor Jonas to touch it. There is no one cares for it, no one loves it, no one who does not wish its death, but me, and I will fight, and never—"