"
"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.
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