'Why did you knock those staples out?' I asked him.
'I didn't want any one going up into those workings.' He stood up. 'What I do on my own property is my business, Pryce. Wheal Garth belongs to me. And no damned deserter I
of a miner is coming letting the sea into Wheal Garth.'
'Deserter of a miner, is it?' I roared. 'And what are you then? A murderer.'
At the word he seemed to shrink back, his face pale. The skin of his cheeks tightened across the bones so that his beard seemed to grow out of his skull. 'No,' he said. 'No.' His beard lifted. 'That's a lie,' he almost screamed.
'It's not a lie,' I thundered. 'You left me to die, buried alive in your damned mine because you were afraid of me. You had no more consideration for me than you had for the dog you flung down that shaft after your wife — or than you had for my mother.'
He seemed to have shrunk in stature. He looked bent and old. 'I did it to save your mother,' he said. 'I tell you I did it to save her.'
His vehemence brought the horrible thing that had been in my mind crawling to the surface. I tried to dispel it. It just wasn't possible. And yet… 'Your wife, Harriet, left you all her holdings in Wheal Garth, didn't she?'
He seemed to sense the drift of my question, for he began to tremble and didn't speak.
'Didn't she?' I shouted at him.