"No, I won't," answered Stephen Gimlet, "if it were to save you from hanging, I would not put my foot over that doorstep. It is no use talking, Mr. Wittingham; I will have nothing more to do with any of your tricks. I don't wish ever to see you again; I am in a new way of life, and it won't do, I can tell you."
"Oh, I have heard all about that," answered the young man, in a light tone; "and, moreover, that you have taken a silly fancy into your head, that I set fire to your cottage. It is all nonsense, upon my word. Your boy must have done it, playing with the fire that was on the hearth."
Stephen Gimlet's face turned somewhat pale with the effort to keep down the anger that was in his heart; but he replied shortly and quickly, for fear it should burst forth:
"The boy had no fire to play with--you knew well he was locked up in the bedroom, and there he was found, when you burned the place down."
"Well, if I had any hand in it," said young Wittingham, "it must have been a mere accident."
"Ay, when you knew there was a poor helpless child in the house," said Stephen Gimlet, bitterly, "it was a sort of accident which well-nigh deserved hanging."
"Nonsense, nonsense, my good fellow," said the young man, "you are angry about nothing; and though you have got a good place, I dare say you are not a man to refuse a couple of guineas when they are offered to you."
"If you offer them," cried Stephen Gimlet, furiously, "I'll throw them in your face--an accident, indeed! to burn my cottage, and nearly my poor child! I suppose it was by accident that you stopped the carriage in the lane? And by accident that you set a man to fire at your own father through the window?"
"Hush, hush, Stephen," cried Widow Lamb, catching hold of his coat and attempting to keep him back, as he took a step towards Harry Wittingham, who turned very pale.
The young man recovered his audacity the next moment, however, and exclaimed: