’What’ll you do wi’ he now? Mother be poked under the hearthstone, where the fire can warm her. But when Old Grizzly goes, I shan’t put he along o’ mother. He can’t sleep under the table now, and her’ll lead’n a life of it, if he be put under the hearthstone along of she. Her niver worrits me, but her don’t leave old vaither alone not one minnit of nights. Her does it because he knacked her, and beat her scores and scores o’ times when her were alive. Now her thinks her turn be come. But her’s got no vice in her. It be all play, only vaither be that crabbed he don’t put up wi’ it. When Old Grizzly goes, I’ll up wi’ his heels and send him into a bog once for all. He’ll be wet and cold there I reckon, and the moss grows so thick over them quaking bogs, that once in there be no getting out, no more than when you’re gone under the ice on Rayborough Pool. Then he’ll leave me in peace I reckon.’ ’You will do that, you long cripple (viper), you!’ screamed the old man, who had overheard the arrangements planned for his interment, and disapproved of them. ’You will do that!’ He rushed on Joyce from behind, raining furious blows on her with his fists. ’You will stog me in a bog, will’y? I’ll put you in fust, curs’d ever-lasting rallaluley if I don’t.’ The old man yelled with fury. He stepped backwards and leaped at Joyce, and beat and swore. The young lady was frightened, and cried out for help. The horrible old man seemed to her to be some superhuman apparition rising out of the moor soil—a vampyre, a ghoul from a cairn, come to destroy the wretched girl before her. ’You chuck down thicky (that) stone, vaither?’ cried Joyce, as he stooped and took up a piece of granite in both hands. ’I won’t, I won’t. I’ll mash you first, you unnat’ral varmint! You nigh upon killed me by rolling me over and over in the cask, and shan’t I nigh upon do the same by you? Glory rallaluley, blast me blue!’ Joyce was unquestionably stronger than old Cobbledick, and might have disarmed him, but the divine spark had been communicated to her; it flickered faintly in her dim soul, and a dumb instinct forbade her raising her hand against her father. She had borne his brutality for many a year, and had not resented it. She was his child, for him to deal with as he thought best. The sense of property had become strongly rooted in the minds of this branch of the Cobble dicks, and as forces are correlated, and heat, and light, and electricity, and sound are but the same force acting in different ways, so was it with the sense of possession. In the breast of Joyce it had transformed itself into a consciousness of filial duty. Joyce put up her hand to ward off the blow. Then the young man who had carried the injured gentleman away arrived, running up, summoned by the cries, and with one stroke of the stick he held in his hand, he made the old man drop the stone. ’In another moment he would have beaten out your brains,’ said he, panting.