"Nonsense!" said Gordon, dryly. "My land is my own. Would you shoot the poultry in my barn-yard?" "If I did," cried Jocelyn, with eyes ablaze, "I'd not be in your debt, young man. You are walking on my father's land. Ask _your_ father why! Yes, go back to the city and hunt him up at his millionaire's club and ask him why you are driving Tom Jocelyn off of his old land!" "My father died three years ago," said Gordon, between his set teeth. "What do you mean?" Jocelyn looked at him blankly. "What do you mean?" repeated Gordon, with narrowing eyes. Jocelyn stood quite still. Presently he looked down at the fish on the ground and moved it with his foot. Then Gordon asked him for the third time what he meant, and Jocelyn, raising his eyes, answered him: "With the dead all quarrels die." "That is not enough!" said Gordon, harshly. "Do you believe my father wronged you?" "He's dead," said Jocelyn, as though speaking to himself. Presently he picked up the fish and walked towards his house, gray head bent between his shoulders. For a moment Gordon hesitated, then he threw his gun smartly over his shoulder and motioned his dogs to heel. But his step had lost something of its elasticity, and he climbed the hill slowly, following with troubled eyes his own shadow, which led him on over the dead grass. The edge of the woods was warm in the sunshine. Faint perfumes of the vanished summer lingered in fern and bramble. He did not enter the woods. There was a fallen log, rotten and fragrant, half buried in the briers, and on it he found a seat, calling his dogs to his feet. In the silence of morning he could hear the pine-borers at work in the log he was sitting on, scra-ape! scra-ape! scr-r-rape! deep in the soft, dry pulp under the bark. There were no insects abroad except the white-faced pine hornets, crawling stiffly across the moss. He noticed no birds, either, at first, until, glancing up, he saw a great drab butcher-bird staring at him from a dead pine.