"A lie. You have told me that, and nought else."
"Dick, Dick, mind, it's your father you are putting the lie on," said the old man, kindling up so fiercely that his stooping figure rose erect, and his eyes shone beneath their heavy brows like water under a bank thick with rushes.
"What took you up yonder, I say?" was the curt answer. "I want the truth, and mean to have it out of you before we go a stride farther. Do you understand, now?"
"I went to ask after the young maister," was the sullen reply.
"The truth! I will have the truth—so out with it, before I do you a harm!"
"Before ye do your old father a harm! Nay, nay, lad, it has no come to that."
Dick bent the sapling almost double, and let it recoil with a vicious snap, a significant answer that kindled the old man's wrath so fiercely that he seized upon the offending stick, placed one end under his foot, and twisted it apart with a degree of fury that startled the son out of his sneering insolence.
"Now what hast got to say to your father, Dick? Speak out; but remember that I am that, and shall be till you get to be the strongest man."
The thin features of Richard Storms turned white, and his eyes shone. He had depended too much, it seemed, on the withering influence his insolent overbearance had produced on the old man, whose will and strength had at last been aroused by the audacious threat wielded in that sapling. Whether he really would have degraded the old farmer with a blow or not, is uncertain; but, once aroused, the stout old man was more than a match for his son, and the force of habit came back upon him so powerfully, that he began to roll up the cuffs of his fustian jacket, as if preparing for an onset.
"Say out what there is in you, and do it gingerly, or you'll soon find out who is maister here," the old man said, with all the rough authority of former times.