“So!” he cried, “so!  Now we get at the whole heart of the matter.  You have been learning heresy from those false Trevlyns at the Chase—­those renegade, treacherous, time-serving Trevlyns, who are a disgrace to their name and their station!  Wretched boy! have I not warned you times and again to have no dealings with those evil relatives?  Kinsmen they may be, but kinsmen who have disgraced the name they bear.  I would I had Richard Trevlyn here beneath my hand now, that I might stuff his false doctrine down his false throat to choke him withal!  And to think that he has corrupted my son, as if the rearing of his own heretic brood was not enough!”

Cuthbert was unable to speak; his father’s hand pressed too tightly on his throat.  He did not struggle or resist.  Those were days when sons—­ay, and daughters too—­were used to receiving severe chastisement from the parental hand without murmur:  and Nicholas Trevlyn had not been one to spare the rod where his son had been concerned.  His wrath seemed to rise as he felt the slight form of the lad sway beneath his strong grasp.  Surely that slim stripling could be reduced to obedience; but the lesson must be a sharp one, for plainly the poison was working, and had already produced disastrous results.

“Miserable boy!” cried Nicholas, his eyes blazing in their cavernous hollows, “the time has come when this matter must be settled betwixt us twain.  Swear that thou wilt go no more to the churches of the Protestant faction, be the laws what they may; swear that thou wilt hold no more converse on matters of religion with thy cousins at the Chase—­swear these things with a solemn and binding oath, and all may yet be well.  Refuse, and thou shalt yet learn, as thou hast not learned before, what the wrath of a wronged and outraged father can be!”

Petronella, the dark-eyed girl, who had all this while been crouching back in her high-backed chair in an attitude of shrinking terror, now sprang suddenly towards her brother, crying:  “O Cuthbert, Cuthbert! prithee do not anger him more!

“Father, O dear sir, let but him go this once!  He does not willingly anger you; he does but—­”

“Peace, foolish girl, and begone!  This is no time for woman’s whining.  Thy brother and I can settle this business betwixt us twain.  But stay, go thou to my room and fetch thence the strong whip wherewith I chastise the unruly hounds.  Those who disobey like dogs must be beaten like dogs.

“But, an thou wilt swear to do my bidding in the future, and avoid all pestilent controversy with those false scions of thy house, thy chastisement shall be light.  Defy me, and thou shalt feel the full weight of my arm as thou hast never felt it before.”

Petronella had never seen her father so angry in all her life before.  True, he had always been a harsh, stern man, an unloving father, a captious tyrant in his own house.  But there had been limits to his anger.  It had taken more generally the form of sullen brooding than of wild wrath, and the irritation and passion which had lately been increasing visibly in him was something comparatively new.