He was by no means clear, however, as he walked away from the cottage, that he had succeeded in doing so. What was the good of trying to make friends with these fellows? Neither in agreement nor in opposition had he any common ground with them. Other people might have the gifts for managing them; it seemed to him that it would be better for him to take up the line at once that he had none. Fontenoy was right. Nothing but a state of enmity was possible--veiled enmity at some times, open at others. What were those voices on the slope above him? He was walking along a road which skirted his own group of pits. To his left rose a long slope of refuse, partly grown over, ending in the "bank" whereon stood the engine-house and winding-apparatus. A pathway climbed the slope and made the natural ascent to the pit for people dwelling in the scattered cottages on the farther side of it. Two men, he saw, were standing high up on the pathway, violently disputing. One was Madan, his own manager, an excellent man of business and a bitter Tory. The other was Valentine Burrows. As Tressady neared the road-entrance to the pathway the two men parted. Madan climbed on towards the pit. Burrows ran down the path. As he approached the gate, and saw Tressady passing on the road, the agent called: "Sir George Tressady!" George stopped. Burrows came quickly up to him, his face crimson. "Is it by your orders, Sir George, that Mr. Madan insults and browbeats me when he meets me on a perfectly harmless errand to one of the men in your engine-house?" "Perhaps Mr. Madan was not so sure as you were, Mr. Burrows, that the errand _was_ a harmless one," said George, with a cool smile. By this time, however, Burrows was biting his lip, and very conscious that he had made an impulsive mistake. "Don't imagine for a moment," he said hotly, "that Madan's opinion of anything I may be doing matters one brass farthing to me! Only I give you and him fair warning that if he blackguards me again in the way he has done several times lately, I shall have him bound over." "He might survive it," said George. "But how will you manage it? You have had ill-luck, rather, with the magistrates--haven't you?" He stood drawn up to his full height, thin, venomous, alert, rather enjoying the encounter, which "let off the steam" of his previous irritations. Burrows threw him a furious look. "You think that a damaging thing to say, do you, Sir George? Perhaps the day will come--not so far off, neither--when the magistrates will be no longer your creatures, but ours. Then we shall see!" "Well, prophecy is cheap," said George. "Console yourself with it, by all means." The two men measured each other eye to eye. Then, unexpectedly, after the relief of his outburst, the philosopher's instincts which were so oddly interwoven with the rest of Tressady's nature reasserted themselves.