“Never you mind Mr. Whymper,” said the landlord, gruffly, but at the same time relaxing his grasp upon the young man’s shoulder; “the parson needs all his cleverness to take care of himself in this matter, and will have no helping hand to spare for you.  The Squire is in a pretty temper with you both, I promise you.  Here’s his letter, if you’d like to see what he says of you in black and white; not that there’s much white in it, egad!”

It was a custom of the Squire of Crompton, unconsciously plagiarized from the Great Napoleon, to let all letters addressed to him in an unfamiliar hand answer themselves.  They were not destroyed, but lay for weeks or months unopened, until the fancy seized him to examine their contents.  He made, it was true, a gallant exception in the case of those whose superscription seemed to promise a lady correspondent; but that had not been the case with the communication from Trevethick, and hence the long interval that had elapsed before it was attended to.  Trevethick’s business letters had hitherto, as was the case with all tenants of Crompton estate, been addressed to the chaplain only, so that he was unaware of this peculiarity of Carew, and had naturally construed his silence into a tacit admission of the truth of Richard’s statement.

If force of language and bitterness of tone could have made up for his previous neglect, the Squire’s letter was an apology in itself.  It was short, but sharp and decisive.  “The grain of truth,” he wrote, “among the bushel of lies that this young gentleman has told you is, that he was once a guest under my roof—­I forget whether for two nights or three.  He will never be there again—­neither now nor after I am in my box” (this was the Squire’s playful way of alluding to the rites of sepulture).  “He has no more claim upon me than any other of my bastards—­of whom I have more than I know of—­and in fact less, for I may have deceived their mothers, whereas his played a trick on me.  As to his expectations from me, I can only tell you this much, that I expect he will come to be hanged; as for interest, whatever he may have with my son of a she-dog of a chaplain, he has none with me; and as for money, so far as I know, he is a pauper, and likely to remain so as long as he lives.”  There were other sentences spurted from the volcano of the Squire’s wrath, but to the same effect.

“A nice letter of recommendation, truly, and from his own father, of the young gentleman who asked me for my daughter’s hand!” growled Trevethick.  “You ought to be thankful to get out of Gethin with whole bones.  If ‘Sol’ was to come to know of what you asked of me, I would not answer for even so much as that, I promise you.”

“‘Sol’ might have known of it had you not chosen to keep it from him, for reasons best known to yourself,” said Richard, quietly.  “You have taken some time to make up your mind between us.”

Trevethick winced; for the promise of the young man’s interest with respect to Wheal Danes had, in fact, been the bait which had tempted him to temporize so long.  He had never meant to give his daughter to Richard; but he had hoped to reap an advantage, present or future, out of the implied intention; nor did he know even yet in what relation Richard stood with Parson Whymper.