He whipped the cob, and the brute moved on.
Mehetabel walked forward and outstripped the conveyance. Old Clutch was a specially slow walker. She soon reached that point at which moorland began, without hedge on either side. Trees had ceased to stud the heathy surface.
Before her rose the ridge that culminated where rose the gallows, and stood inky black against the silvery light of declining day behind them.
To the north, in the plain gleamed some ponds.
Curlew were piping sadly.
Mehetabel was immersed in her own thoughts, glad to be by herself. Jonas had not said much to her in the cart, yet his presence had been irksome. She thought of the past, of her childhood along with Iver, of the day when he ran away. How handsome he had become! What an expression of contempt had passed over his countenance when he looked at Bideabout, and learned that he was the bridegroom—the happy man who had won her! How earnestly he had gazed into her eyes, till she was compelled to lower them!
Was Iver going to settle at the Ship? Would he come over to the Punch-Bowl to see her? Would he come often and talk over happy childish days? There had been a little romance between them as children: long forgotten: now reviving.
Her hand trembled as she raised it to her lips to wipe away the dew that had formed there.
She had reached the highest point on the road, and below yawned the great crater-like depression, at the bottom of which lay the squatter settlement. A little higher, at the very summit of the hill, stood the gibbet, and the wind made the chains clank as it trifled with them. The bodies were gone, they had mouldered away, and the bones had fallen and were laid in the earth or sand beneath, but the gallows remained.
Clink! clink! clank! Clank! clink! clink!