“And suppose you get me tried all over again?” said Lannoe. “Look here, Master Tregenna, you’re a gentleman, and I’m only a rough miner, but we are both on the same road. I arn’t blind, so you may just as well speak plain. I know, you know, and speak plain, and don’t hide it from you about Bess Prawle, and my being kicked off and threatened. You don’t suppose I let Amos Pengelly half kill me when he threw me on the rocks without owing him for it and wanting to pay it back, even if I do work with him now all smooth? Why can’t you speak plain too? I know, you know, about your wanting young miss, and the old man saying you shouldn’t, and your Amos Pengelly—this here bullying, ordering Londoner—coming and throwing you. There, master, you’d better hand over that hundred pounds.”
“And if I do?” said Tregenna, leaning forward, placing his elbows on the table as he faced Lannoe, and joined his hands carefully as if he were going to say his prayers.
“Wait and see,” said the man. “You don’t want to know, sir. You want to hear that Wheal Carnac’s a failure, and I’m the man as can make it one. Now what do you say?”
Tregenna remained thinking for a time, with hate and revenge against cautiousness fighting for the mastery.
It was two to one, and cautiousness was beaten.
“I’ll give you the hundred pounds, Lannoe,” he said; “but I warn you that if you play me false I’ll have the police on your track at once. You may think think you could get away, or throw it back in my face that I set you to do something; but you could not get away, and my character would be set against yours if you brought any charge against me.”
“Who’s going to?” cried the man.
“And if it cost me a couple of thousand pounds, man, I’d have you in the dock.”
“Don’t I tell you I’d do any thing to pay Amos Pengelly, master. Hand over that money.”
“I have not got it here,” said Tregenna.