ne,
like that infernal fellow who goes by the title of Reverend, down below
there. That'll do, that will do; there's some extortion at the bottom of
this. You're putting on a screw."

"We're putting on a screw, sir," said Robert, coolly.

"Not a penny will you get by it."

Robert flushed with heat of blood.

"You don't wish you were a young man half so much as I do just now," he
remarked, and immediately they were in collision, for the squire made a
rush to the bell-rope, and Robert stopped him. "We're going," he said;
"we don't want man-servants to show us the way out. Now mark me, Mr.
Blancove, you've insulted an old man in his misery: you shall suffer for
it, and so shall your son, whom I know to be a rascal worthy of
transportation. You think Mr. Fleming came to you for money. Look at this
old man, whose only fault is that he's too full of kindness; he came to
you just for help to find his daughter, with whom your rascal of a son
was last seen, and you swear he's come to rob you of money. Don't you
know yourself a fattened cur, squire though you be, and called gentleman?
England's a good place, but you make England a hell to men of spirit. Sit
in your chair, and don't ever you, or any of you cross my path; and speak
a word to your servants before we're out of the house, and I stand in the
hall and give 'em your son's history, and make Wrexby stink in your
nostril, till you're glad enough to fly out of it. Now, Mr. Fleming,
there's no more to be done here; the game lies elsewhere."

Robert took the farmer by the arm, and was marching out of the enemy's
territory in good order, when the squire, who had presented many
changeing aspects of astonishment and rage, arrested them with a call. He
began to say that he spoke to Mr. Fleming, and not to the young ruffian
of a bully whom the farmer had brought there: and then asked in a very
reasonable manner what he could do--what measures he could adopt to aid
the farmer in finding his child. Robert hung modestly in the background
while the farmer laboured on with a few sentences to explain the case,
and finally the squire said, that his foot permitting (it was an almost
pathetic reference to the weakness of flesh), he would go down to Fairly
on the day following and have a personal interview with his son, and set
things right, as far as it lay in his power, though he was by no means
answerable for a young man's follies.

He was a little frightened by the farmer's having