If the view taken by the judge had even been a correct one, as to “motive,” Richard had been hardly dealt with, most severely sentenced; but in his own eyes he was an almost innocent man—­the victim of an infamous conspiracy, in which she who, was his nearest and dearest had treacherously joined.  After flattering him with false hopes, she had deserted him at the eleventh hour, and in a manner even more atrocious than the desertion itself.  He knew, of course, that it was mainly owing to her evidence, to which he had looked for his preservation, that his ruin had been so complete and overwhelming; but what he hated her worst for was for that smile she had bestowed upon him as she entered the witness-box, and which had bade him hope where no hope was.  He could not be mistaken as to that.  She had known that she was about to doom him by her silence to years of misery, and yet she had had the devilish cruelty to smile upon him, as she had often smiled, when they had sat, cheek to cheek, together!  Since they had done so, he could never lift his hand against her (he felt that even now)—­never strike her, slay her, nor even poison her; but he would have revenge upon her for all that.  He would smite her, as she had smitten him, no matter how long the blow might be in falling:  if her affections should be entwined in any human creatures, against them should his rage be directed; he would make her desolate, as she had rendered him; he would turn their love for her to hate, if it were possible, and, if not, he would destroy them.  As for her father—­as for that stone devil Trevethick—­it choked him to think that nature herself might preserve him from his wrath, that the old man might die before his hour of expiation could arrive.  But Solomon Coe would live to feel his vengeance.  His hatred was at white heat now; what would it be after twenty years of unmerited torture?  To think that this terrible punishment had befallen him through such contemptible agencies—­through such dull brains and vulgar hands—­was maddening; and yet he must needs feed upon that thought for twenty years, and keep his senses too, that at the end they might work out his purpose to the uttermost.  There was plenty of time to plan and scheme and plot before him, and henceforth that should be his occupation.  Revenge should be his latest thought and his earliest, and all night long he would dream of nothing else.  His wrath against judge and jury, and the rest of them—­though if he could have slain them all with a word he would have uttered it—­was slight compared with the vehemence of his fury against those three at Gethin.  Rage possessed him wholly, and, though without numbing him to the painful sense of his miserable doom, rendered him almost unconscious of what was going on about him.