Blaize was quite at his ease; nowise in a
hurry. He spoke of the weather and the harvest: of recent doings up at
the Abbey: glanced over that year's cricketing; hoped that no future
Feverel would lose a leg to the game. Richard saw and heard Arson in it
all. He blinked harder as he neared the cup. In a moment of silence, he
seized it with a gasp.

"Mr. Blaize! I have come to tell you that I am the person who set fire
to your rick the other night."

An odd consternation formed about the farmer's mouth. He changed his
posture, and said, "Ay? that's what ye're come to tell me sir?"

"Yes!" said Richard, firmly.

"And that be all?"

"Yes!" Richard reiterated.

The farmer again changed his posture. "Then, my lad, ye've come to tell
me a lie!"

Farmer Blaize looked straight at the boy, undismayed by the dark flush
of ire he had kindled.

"You dare to call me a liar!" cried Richard, starting up.

"I say," the farmer renewed his first emphasis, and smacked his thigh
thereto, "that's a lie!"

Richard held out his clenched fist. "You have twice insulted me.
You have struck me: you have dared to call me a liar. I would have
apologized--I would have asked your pardon, to have got off that fellow
in prison. Yes! I would have degraded myself that another man should not
suffer for my deed"--

"Quite proper!" interposed the farmer.

"And you take this opportunity of insulting me afresh. You're a coward,
sir! nobody but a coward would have insulted me in his own house."

"Sit ye down, sit ye down, young master," said the farmer, indicating
the chair and cooling the outburst with his hand. "Sit ye down. Don't
ye be hasty. If ye hadn't been hasty t'other day, we sh'd a been friends
yet. Sit ye down, sir. I sh'd be sorry to reckon you out a liar, Mr.
Feverel, or anybody o' your name. I respects yer father though we're
opp'site politics. I'm willin' to think well o' you. What I say is, that
as you say an't the trewth. Mind! I don't like you none the worse for't.
But it an't what is. That's all! You knows it as well's I!"

Richard, disdaining to show signs of being pacified, angrily reseated
himself. The farmer spoke sense, and the boy, after his late interview
with Austin, had become capable of perceiving vaguely that a towering
passion is hardly the justification for a wrong course of conduct.

"Come," continued the farmer, not unkindly, "what else have you to say?"

Here was the same bitter cup he had already once drai