’Does your father often beat you?’ ’As he likes, but that don’t matter now.’ ’Why not?’ ’Becos I don’t belong to ’n any more.’ ’What! emancipated at last, Joyce?’ ’I belongs to you.’ ’To me!’ Herring drew back, staggered by the thought. ’A coorse I do. Vaither a’most broked me to pieces, and I’d a died, but you mended me up and made me to live again. So it stands to reason that I don’t belong to vaither no more, but belong to you. ’Tes clear as a moor stream. I can see the reason on it as sartain as I can a trout in a brook. I’ve been a thinking it over and over, and I never could reckon it right out. Then, one night mother began to grub her way up by thicky stone. I seed her grey hairs coming out o’ the ground, and I thought ’twere moss; but after some’ut white and round like a turnip comes, and I sed to myself, "How ever comes a turnip to be growing here, under the Giant’s Table?" Presently I seed her eyes acoming up, and then I knowed it were mother. Then I went over and I helped her wi’ a rabbit’s legbone. I scratched the earth away, so as her could get her nose and mouth out of the ground, and her were snuffling like a horned owl.’ ’My dear Joyce, you were dreaming.’ ’It were true—true as I see you here.’ ’But, Joyce, how could you have helped her out of the ground, as you say, with your arms broken?’ Joyce was puzzled. Like other savages, she had not arrived at that point of enlightenment in which dream and reality are distinguished. ’I don’t know nothing about that,’ said Joyce, ’but it be true what I ses, I know that very well. Let me go on. At last when her could speak plain, her sed, "Joyce, you belong no more to Grizzly, you belong to the young maister." So I sez to her, "How can that be?" Then her answers, "You mind the old iron crock as were chucked away by the Battishills. They’d a broke ’n, and wanted ’n no more. Then your vaither found ’n and mended ’n up somehow. There her hangs now wi’ turnips and cabbidge a stewing in her over the fire. Do thicky crock belong to the Battishills now any more? No, her don’t, they broke ’n and chucked ’n away. Her belongs to Old Grizzly for becos he took ’n and patched ’n up. That be reason," sed my mother, "for sartain." And what her said be true and right. So I belong to you.’ ’But I decline the honour, Joyce,’ said Herring, laughing. ’Will you beat and break me and cast me away, like as did vaither?’ ’I beat and hurt you! God forbid, my poor child.’ ’Then till you does, I belongs to’y—that’s sartain!’ She laid herself down on the cushions with the action and tone of voice that implied the matter was concluded past contradiction.