"What must it be, then, to suffer so for twenty years?"
It was a third voice that seemed to wake the echoes of that lonesome cavern. Solomon looked up in terror, and beheld a third face, that of Robert Balfour, but transfigured. He held the glowing brand above him, so that his deep-lined features could be distinctly seen, and they were all instinct with a deadly rage and malice. There was a fire in his eyes that might well have been taken for that of madness, and Solomon's heart sank within him as he looked.
"Mr. Balfour," said he, in a coaxing voice, "come and look at your treasure. It sparkles in the light of my lantern like gold, and you shall have it all if you please; I do not wish to share it with you."
"So you take me for a madman, do you? Look again; look fixedly upon me, Solomon Coe. You do not recognize me even yet? I do not wonder. It is not you that are dull, but I that am so changed by wrong and misery. My own mother does not know me, nor the woman of whom you robbed me nineteen years ago. Yes, you know me now. I am Richard Yorke!"
"Mercy, mercy!" gasped Solomon, dropping on his knees.
Richard laughed long and loud. The echoes of his ghastly mirth died slowly away, and when his voice was heard again it was stern and solemn. "It is my turn at last, man; I am the judge to-day, as you were the witness nineteen years ago who doomed me wrongfully to shame and misery. Night and day I have had this hour in my mind; the thought of it has been my only joy—in chains and darkness, in toil and torment, fasting and wakeful on my prison pillow, I have thought of nothing else. I did not know how it would come about, but I was sure that it would come. You swore falsely once that I was a thief; I am now about to be a murderer, and your whitening bones will not be able to witness against me."
"I never swore it, Mr. Yorke," pleaded Solomon, passionately.
"Your memory is defective," answered Richard, gloomily; "you forget that I was in court myself on that occasion. You did your very worst to blacken me before judge and jury, and you succeeded."
"But it was Trevethick—it was father-in-law who urged me to do it; it was indeed."
"I know it," replied the other, coldly; "he was a greater villain than yourself, but unhappily an older one. Death has robbed me of him, and made my vengeance incomplete. Still there is something left for me. While you die slowly here—But no; I shall wait at Turlock for that to happen. A strong man like you, who have rats to live upon, may last ten days, perhaps. Well, when you are dead, I shall return to your London house, and lead your son to ruin. You permitted me to begin the work in hopes of getting half this mine; I shall finish it while you are in sole possession of the whole of it."