As the groom withdrew, Carew made his appearance at the open door.  He was smoking a cigar, although it was within an hour of dinner-time; and at his heels slouched a huge bull-dog, who immediately began to growl and sniff at the new guest.  “Quiet, you brute!” exclaimed the Squire, with his customary garnish of strong expletive.  “Welcome to Crompton, Mr.—­I forget your name; or rather you forgot, I think, to favor me with it.”

“My name is Richard Yorke, Sir.”

“Yorke, Yorke—­that sounds easterly.  You are of the Cambridgeshire stock, I reckon, are you not?”

“No, Sir,” returned the other, with a slight tremor in his voice, which he could not control; “I come from nearer home.  Your wife’s first husband was called Yorke, if you remember, and I bear his name, although I am her lawful son, by you, Sir.”

CHAPTER V.

AT CROMPTON.

After the bold avowal made at the conclusion of the last chapter, Richard Yorke and his father (for such indeed he was) stood confronting one another, for near a minute, without a word.  A tempest of evil passions swept over Carew’s swarthy face, and his eyes flashed with a fire that seemed to threaten personal violence.  The bull-dog, too, as though perceiving his master’s irritation with the stranger, began to growl again; and this, perhaps, was fortunate for the young man, as affording a channel for the Squire’s pent-up wrath.  With a great oath, leveled alike at man and brute, he raised his foot, and kicked the latter to the other side of the room.

“Impudent bastard!” cried he; “how dare you show your face beneath my roof?”

“How dare I?” responded the young man, excitedly, and with his handsome face aglow.  “Because there was naught to fear; and if there were, I should not have feared it.”

“Tut, tut! so bold a game could never have entered into your young head.  Your mother must have set you on to do it—­come, Sir, the truth, the truth.”

“She did not set me on, father,” insisted the other, earnestly.  “I came here of my own will.  I have been dwelling within a stone’s-throw of your house these six months, in hopes to see you face to face.  She told me not to come—­I swear she did.”

“So much the better for her,” ejaculated the Squire, grimly.  “If I thought that she had any hand in this, not another shilling of my money should she ever touch.  It was agreed between us,” he continued, passionately—­“and I, for my part, am a man who keeps his word—­that she and hers should never meddle more with me and mine; and now she has broken faith.”

“Nay, Sir, but she has not,” returned the young man, firmly.  “I tell you it was against her will that I came hither.”