"You confounded rogue!" he exclaimed hotly, "so you're not only shooting my partridges, but you're actually shooting them before my eyes." "What's that?" asked Archie, only half understanding the words, "were you after that bird yourself then?" "Well, rather, my friend, and I'll trouble you at the same time to hand over that string on your shoulder." "Hand them over? Well, I like that! Why, I shot them." "But you shot them on my land didn't you?" "What in the devil do you mean by that? My folks have shot over these fields before yours were ever heard of about here. A bird doesn't happen to be yours, I reckon, just because it takes a notion to fly over your pasture." "Do you mean to tell me that you don't respect a man's right to his game?" "A man's game is the bird in the bag, not in the air, I reckon. This land was open hunting in the time of the Jordans, and we're not going to keep off of it at the first bid of any Tom-fool that thinks he's got a better right to it." The assumption of justice angered Gay far more than the original poaching had done. To be flouted in his own pasture on the subject of his own game by a handsome barbarian, whom he had caught red-handed in the act of stealing, would have appealed irresistibly to his sense of humour, if it had not enraged him. "All the same I give you fair warning," he retorted, "that the next time I find you trespassing on my land, I'll have the law after you." "The law--bosh! Do you think I'm afraid of it?" Somewhere at the back of Gay's brain, a curtain was drawn, and he saw clearly as if it were painted in water colour, an English landscape and a poacher, who had been caught with a stolen rabbit, humbly pulling the scant locks on his forehead. Well, this was one of the joys of democracy, doubtless, and he was in for the rest of them. These people had got the upper hand certainly, as Aunt Kesiah had complained. "If you think I'll tamely submit to open robbery by such insolent rascals as you, you're mistaken, young man," he returned. The next instant he sprang aside and knocked up Archie's gun, which had been levelled at him. The boy's face was white under his sunburn, and the feathers on the partridges that hung from his shoulder trembled as though a strong wind were blowing. "Rascal, indeed!" he stammered, and spat on the ground after his words in the effort to get rid of the taste of them, "as if the whole county doesn't know that you're another blackguard like your uncle before you. Ask any decent woman in the neighbourhood if she would have been seen in his company!" His rage choked him suddenly, and before he could speak again the other struck him full in the mouth. "Take that and hold your tongue, you young savage!" Then as he stooped for his gun, which he had laid down, a shot passed over his head and whizzed lightly across the meadow.