This was too much. The farmer was in the main a placid man and a good-tempered one; but he could not stand this, and he well knew whom he had to thank for the outrage. Whether or no Saul had prompted the men to do the mischief mattered little. It was he who had fostered in them the spirit of disobedience and self-will which had been at the bottom of the outrage; and so long as he remained on the place there was no prospect of things being better. Before his anger had had time to cool, he summoned Saul, and a battle of words ensued, which led to the summary dismissal of the young man, whilst the farmer strode out of the kitchen, in which the interview had taken place, in a white heat of rage and disappointment. Saul stood looking after him with a strange gleam in his eyes, and then his eyes caught sight of Genefer crouching in a corner with her hands over her face. Saul had not thought much of Genefer all this while, as presumably she had been well aware; but the sight of her distress touched him, and he would have approached her to offer some rude sympathy, had she not suddenly sprung up and faced him with blazing eyes and a fury only second to that which her father had displayed. In the emphatic and most idiomatic vernacular, which is always used by natives in moments of excitement, she told Saul _her_ opinion of him and of his conduct; she let loose in a flood all the mingled pique, anger, disappointment, and jealousy which his conduct of the past months had inspired. That he should presume to ask her love, and then care for nothing but wild notions that savoured to her of the devil himself, and which all right-minded people reprobated to the last extent, was an insult she could not put up with. Woman-like, she had looked to stand first and to stand paramount with handsome Saul, when once she had permitted him to woo her; and instead of this, he had heeded her less and less with every week that passed, and had even refused to remain on Sunday at the farm when she had asked it as a favour; and at last had done this mischief to her father through his mischievous, ill-conditioned tongue. She would have none of him, no, not she! He might go to his friends the fisher-folk, or to the slums of Pentreath for a wife, if he wanted one!--she would have none of him! He had been false to her, he had treated her shamefully, and now he might go. She never wished to see him again! And bursting into tears (the almost invariable climax to an outburst of anger with women of her class) Genefer rushed from the room, and Saul, looking white about the lips, but with a blaze in his eyes which made all who met him shrink away from him, put together the few things he had at the farm besides his books, and stalked away into Pentreath, where he found an audience as ready to listen to him as he was to address them.