“No it beant that. Everybody as we know seems to be well enough. It’s not a matter of sickness or disease, nor yet of bones breaking, nor crops failing, nor cattle dying of the rinderpest. It be worse than that I’ve heard to-day, Patty. I’ve heard to-day that the man I trusted most in the world—the man I loved loike a brother as one may say—the man I treated as one of my own kin and my own blood——”
He ceased suddenly, and drew his hand across his eyes.
“That man is trying to ruin me—to rob me of all I hold best in the world—that while my bread has been in his mouth, and my words of welcome in his ear, he has been jeering at me in his heart, and setting snares to betray me and mine.”
“Ah, Richard, how very dreadful; but are you sure of this?”
“Quite sure,” he returned—“Quite sure.”
“Ah! I do hope you are mistaken.”
He strode across the room, and gripped her by the shoulder till she winced with pain.
“I tell ’ee there aint any mistake about it,” he ejaculated. “If ye had nursed a worm in your bosom till he had turned a viper what would ye do? Would you let the reptile crawl away, alive and strong as ever, to sting other hearts, or would ye crush his head beneath your heel, as ye’d crush a weazel or a stoat? Wouldn’t ye crush the varmint? Answer me, Patty—speak, wife.”
“You are so excited, so moved, that I hardly know what answer to make; but, Richard, be careful—keep within the law.”
“I’ll keep within the law, never fear,” he answered, with a terrible smile. “But the law, my gell, is hard upon such men as he; and I intend to be hard upon him, or my name’s not Richard Ashbrook. The soft-spoken, circumventing vagabond!”