’Grizzly, I have forbidden the men at the mine to give you anything. If you choose to come there and work, I will find you work that you can do, but if I discover that the men give you drink, and encourage you in your idle, vagabond ways, I shall dismiss them, and find others who will obey me. Mark this, Grizzly, not another drop of anything, in treat or otherwise, do you get at Upaver. Go back to the Giant’s Table, and dig your fields there like a man, instead of slouching about, picking up halfpence and sips of gin, a wretched beggar.’ ’I ain’t to get nothing to Upaver?’ asked Cobbledick, incredulously. ’Do you not understand plain words? Not a drop. I will not have Upaver a curse to you and others, such as Ophir was. If you will work, I will give you tasks equal to your powers.’ ’Ekal to my powers!’ roared Grizzly; ’look at my hands. See, they be two, three times as big as yours. I could break every bone in your body with mun. I be strong; I reckon, stronger than most of they fellows down to Upaver.’ ’Very well, then, work.’ ’I won’t work. I ain’t forced.’ ’No, I am sorry for it. It is a mistake that you are given broken scraps from West Wyke. That keeps you from famishing, and emancipates you from the necessity of working.’ ’You’d cut me off that next, I reckon.’ ’Yes, I would.’ ’You would!’ repeated the old man malevolently. ’You takes away my liquor, and my meat, and my daughter as ought to work and keep me in my old age, and’—he turned and looked up in Herring’s face—’you took the box from under the hearthstone.’ Herring started. The old man observed his advantage and chuckled. ’Grizzly, it is quite true that I took the box. You had no right to it; you had stolen it from the carriage that was upset. I took it that I might return it——’ ’Oh, in coorse, in coorse, you returned the box at once, and all that was in it, to the young lady with the white face.’ Herring could not answer. The old man, with his natural shrewdness, saw that he had gained an advantage. Of the value of the contents of the box he had no idea. He determined to improve his advantage. ’You took thicky box, as you take to plundering me of everything I has. I reckon you’d like to take from me the chance of sleeping in the linney.’ ’Yes, I would, Grizzly. Whatever I deprive you of is for your own advantage. It is not safe for you to lie in the straw of the linney. I know that you have gone in there more than once, tipsy, and smoking your pipe.’ ’Well, what then?’ ’Why, you may be setting fire to the linney, and burn that and the house, and yourself as well. However, to return to the box. If that box had been found in your possession by any one but myself, you would have been sent to prison. The box was not yours. It was stolen. If I desire now to deprive you of drink, it is because drink is degrading you. I want to force you to work.’