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."