“Mr. Blaize!  I have come to tell you that I am the person who set fire to your rick the other night.”

An odd consternation formed about the farmer’s mouth.  He changed his posture, and said, “Ay? that’s what ye’re come to tell me sir?”

“Yes!” said Richard, firmly.

“And that be all?”

“Yes!” Richard reiterated.

The farmer again changed his posture.  “Then, my lad, ye’ve come to tell me a lie!”

Farmer Blaize looked straight at the boy, undismayed by the dark flush of ire he had kindled.

“You dare to call me a liar!” cried Richard, starting up.

“I say,” the farmer renewed his first emphasis, and smacked his thigh thereto, “that’s a lie!”

Richard held out his clenched fist.  “You have twice insulted me.  You have struck me:  you have dared to call me a liar.  I would have apologized—­I would have asked your pardon, to have got off that fellow in prison.  Yes!  I would have degraded myself that another man should not suffer for my deed”—­

“Quite proper!” interposed the farmer.

“And you take this opportunity of insulting me afresh.  You’re a coward, sir! nobody but a coward would have insulted me in his own house.”

“Sit ye down, sit ye down, young master,” said the farmer, indicating the chair and cooling the outburst with his hand.  “Sit ye down.  Don’t ye be hasty.  If ye hadn’t been hasty t’other day, we sh’d a been friends yet.  Sit ye down, sir.  I sh’d be sorry to reckon you out a liar, Mr. Feverel, or anybody o’ your name.  I respects yer father though we’re opp’site politics.  I’m willin’ to think well o’ you.  What I say is, that as you say an’t the trewth.  Mind!  I don’t like you none the worse for’t.  But it an’t what is.  That’s all!  You knows it as well’s I!”

Richard, disdaining to show signs of being pacified, angrily reseated himself.  The farmer spoke sense, and the boy, after his late interview with Austin, had become capable of perceiving vaguely that a towering passion is hardly the justification for a wrong course of conduct.

“Come,” continued the farmer, not unkindly, “what else have you to say?”

Here was the same bitter cup he had already once drained brimming at Richard’s lips again!  Alas, poor human nature! that empties to the dregs a dozen of these evil drinks, to evade the single one which Destiny, less cruel, had insisted upon.

The boy blinked and tossed it off.

“I came to say that I regretted the revenge I had taken on you for your striking me.”

Farmer Blaize nodded.

“And now ye’ve done, young gentleman?”

Still another cupful!