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 physically subjugated by one whom he so utterly despised.

“Keep a civil tongue in your head, cock-sparrow,” growled the giant, “lest I wring your neck.  You’re a nice one to talk of lying; you, with your tales of son and heirship to the Squire, and your offers of copper-mines for the asking!  Who told me how I had been fooled?  Why, Carew himself!  You thought I should write to the parson, eh?”

Richard certainly had thought that he would have written to the parson, but he strove to look as calm and free from disappointment as he could, as he replied:  “It was quite indifferent to me to whom you wrote, Mr. Trevethick.  There was only one account to give of my affairs; and it was the same I had already given to you.  I told you that my father did not choose to acknowledge me for the present, and I have no doubt that your questioning him upon the matter has made him very bitter against me; the more so because he is well aware that he is fighting against the truth; he knows that he was married to my mother in a lawful way, and that I am the issue of that marriage.  It is true that technical objections have been raised against it, but his own conscience warns him that they are worthless.  Mr. Whymper will tell you the same.”