led, and there was John
Trevethick standing beside him, his huge form black against the sun.

"You may well be frightened, young gentleman," were his first ominous
words; "it is only a guilty conscience that starts at a shadow."

Richard _had_ a guilty conscience; and yet the remark that was thus
addressed to him, unconciliatory, if not directly hostile, as it was,
rather reassured him than otherwise.

Trevethick's presence there, for he had never made pretense of seeking
Richard's society for its own sake--was of evil augury; his tone and
manner were morose and threatening; his swarthy face was full of pent-up
wrath; and yet it was obvious to the other that the secret was yet safe,
the divulging of which he had most cause to fear. Had it been otherwise
there would have been no mere thunder-cloud, but a tornado. "The post
has brought some ill news from Crompton," was what flashed across the
young man's brain; and the thought, though sufficiently uncomfortable,
was a relief compared with that he had first entertained, and which had
driven the color from his cheeks.

"I have no cause to be frightened, that I know of, either of you or any
other man, Mr. Trevethick," observed Richard, haughtily.

"I hear you say so," was the other's grim reply; "but I shall be better
pleased to hear you prove it."

"Prove what?"

"Two things--that you are not a bastard, nor a pauper."

Richard leaped down from the wall with a fierce oath; and for a moment
it really seemed that he would have flung himself against his gigantic
opponent, like a fretful wave against a rock of granite.

Trevethick uttered an exclamation of contempt. "Pick up your
sketch-book, young man, or one of those pretty pictures will be spoiled
by which you gain your bread. You've acted the fine gentleman at Gethin
very well, but the play is over now."

"I don't understand you, Mr. Trevethick. If you must needs be insolent,
at all events, be explicit. You have miscalled me by two names--Bastard
and Pauper. Who has put those lies into your mouth, the taste of which
you seem to relish so?"

Trevethick reached forth his huge hand, and seized the other's shoulder
with a gripe of steel. It seemed to compress bone and sinew as in a
vice; the arm between them was as a bar of iron. Richard felt powerless
as a child, and could have cried like a child--not from pain, though he
was in great pain, but from vexation and rage. It was maddening to find
himself thus physicall