‘You remain faithful to your word, sir, do you?’

‘I do.’

‘Then I do similarly.’

’What!  Stop!  Not to take a child like that out of a comfortable house at night in Winter, man?’

’Oh, the night is temperate and warm; he shall not remain in a house where his father is dishonoured.’

‘Stop! not a bit of it,’ cried the squire.  ’No one speaks of you.  I give you my word, you ’re never mentioned by man, woman or child in the house.’

‘Silence concerning a father insinuates dishonour, Mr. Beltham.’

‘Damn your fine speeches, and keep your blackguardly hands off that boy,’ the squire thundered.  ’Mind, if you take him, he goes for good.  He doesn’t get a penny from me if you have the bringing of him up.  You’ve done for him, if you decide that way.  He may stand here a beggar in a stolen coat like you, and I won’t own him.  Here, Harry, come to me; come to your grandad.’

Mr. Richmond caught the boy just when he was turning to run.

‘That gentleman,’ he said, pointing to the squire, ’is your grandpapa.  I am your papa.  You must learn at any cost to know and love your papa.  If I call for you to-morrow or next day they will have played tricks with Harry Richmond, and hid him.  Mr. Beltham, I request you, for the final time, to accord me your promise observe, I accept your promise—­that I shall, at my demand, to-morrow or the next day, obtain an interview with my wife.’

The squire coughed out an emphatic ‘Never!’ and fortified it with an oath as he repeated it upon a fuller breath.

‘Sir, I will condescend to entreat you to grant this permission,’ said Mr. Richmond, urgently.

‘No, never:  I won’t!’ rejoined the squire, red in the face from a fit of angry coughing.  ’I won’t; but stop, put down that boy; listen to me, you Richmond!  I’ll tell you what I’ll do.  I ’ll—­if you swear on a Bible, like a cadger before a bench of magistrates, you’ll never show your face within a circuit o’ ten miles hereabouts, and won’t trouble the boy if you meet him, or my daughter or me, or any one of us-hark ye, I’ll do this:  let go the boy, and I’ll give ye five hundred—­I’ll give ye a cheque on my banker for a thousand pounds; and, hark me out, you do this, you swear, as I said, on the servants’ Bible, in the presence of my butler and me, “Strike you dead as Ananias and t’ other one if you don’t keep to it,” do that now, here, on the spot, and I’ll engage to see you paid fifty pounds a year into the bargain.  Stop! and I’ll pay your debts under two or three hundred.  For God’s sake, let go the boy!  You shall have fifty guineas on account this minute.  Let go the boy!  And your son—­there, I call him your son—­your son, Harry Richmond, shall inherit from me; he shall have Riversley and the best part of my property, if not every bit of it.  Is it a bargain?  Will you swear?  Don’t, and the boy’s a beggar, he’s a stranger here as much as you.  Take him, and by the Lord, you ruin him.  There now, never mind, stay, down with him.  He’s got a cold already; ought to be in his bed; let the boy down!’