"You certainly are teaching me something, Mr. Battick," returned the young farmer with flushed face and angry look. "Put down that gun! What do you mean by threatening to shoot me?" "I'll more than threaten to do it!" declared the man wildly. "You get away from that wheat! You get off this farm! And you stay off!" "What is the matter with you, Mr. Battick?" cried Hiram. "Are you crazy? You haven't got your farm posted over there where I entered." "I can't go to the expense of putting up a 'no trespass' sign every few feet," snarled Battick. "But you, as well as everybody else around here, know that I don't want anybody sneaking around my place. Get out!" and he advanced with the gun again. The double muzzle of the shotgun was a most unpleasant prospect. Hiram Strong did not fancy being backed through the wood to the boundary fence with the gun against his breast. It was too ignominious a prospect to be borne. It has always been a mooted question just how far a man may go to protect his property from trespass. In most cases the courts demand that harmful trespass be proved. And certainly Hiram had done no harm, and contemplated none, in coming here to look at his neighbor's wheat. He did not believe Yancey Battick was altogether sane. But an insane man with a shotgun is a combination as uncertain as a barrel of gunpowder and a match! Hiram half turned towards the woods path through which he had come. Battick, only eight feet or so away, raised the muzzle of his gun a trifle. Like a flash the young fellow wheeled, stooped, and leaped in to seize the man. The gun exploded and Hiram's hat went sailing into the air, its brim in front torn to bits. His forehead was blackened by the smoke of the discharge, so near was it. But he had seized Yancey Battick around the waist and held on. The shotgun fell to the ground under their stamping feet. The young farm manager was more vigorous if not more angry than his antagonist. For half a minute or more they strained and tugged--Hiram to throw the man, the latter to escape from his embrace. Suddenly they broke apart. Both staggered back a pace. They stared at each other, their visages pale now rather than inflamed. Both realized how near to tragedy the incident had led. Hiram drew a palm across his blackened and sweating forehead. Battick still glared, panting, at the young fellow. "I--I might have shot you, Strong. You're a young fool," he muttered. "If anybody lacks sense it is you," retorted Hiram quickly. "If you had killed me I'd only have been dead. But you would have had to pay the penalty." "You are on my land--" "Don't begin that old foolishness," commanded Hiram. He seized the man's arm and led him toward a log at the edge of the wood. Battick was actually shaking and he stared at Hiram in a way that troubled the latter considerably. Could it be that this strange individual was really insane?