“Ahem! I had that honor,” sneered the squire. “But about that suit of clothes,” he added, rising and abruptly changing the subject. “If you insist upon it, why, I suppose I shall have to get them. I’ll step in to see Black, the tailor, to-morrow morning and talk the matter over with him.”
But Clifford had been too highly wrought up to care much about clothes or anything else in connection with his contract. His curiosity had been excited to the highest pitch, and he was determined to learn something about the father whom he had never known—about whom his mother would never talk—if it was possible—to wring any information from his companion, who, he realized, was determined to torment him to the last point of endurance.
“Who was my father? Tell me what you know about him!” he exclaimed, also springing to his feet and placing himself in the squire’s path.
The man regarded him silently for a moment, an evil expression in his cold, gray eyes; then a smile that made Clifford shiver relaxed his thin, cruel lips.
“Who was your father?” he repeated, with cold deliberativeness; “he was a treacherous rascal, if there ever was one, and it is no credit to you that he was your father; and if you were ten years older I should say that he had come back to haunt me! Tell you about him!” he continued, in a terrible tone. “I’ll tell you this much—I hated him; I still hate him as few people have the power to hate, and if you are wise you will never mention him in my presence again, for I might forget myself and wreck my vengeance upon you.”
He turned abruptly as he concluded and entered the house, without giving Clifford time to protest or ask another question. The boy, left alone, sank back into his chair, cold chills creeping over him, his heart burdened with tantalizing fears and suspicions. The squire had called his father a “treacherous rascal.”
In what, he wondered, had he been treacherous and dishonorable? Why was it no credit to him—his son—that he was his father?
Surely, it seemed to him now, in the light of this interview, as if the squire had been continually wreaking his hatred of his father upon him during the four weary years that he had lived with him. But what had caused this hatred? What did it mean?