“Have you seen him?”

“No, your lordship, but James has.  James says he wears a red coat and—­”

“Never mind, Tompkins.  He had no right to fish on this side of that log.  The insufferable ass may own the land on the opposite side, but confound his impertinence, I own it on this side.”

This concluding assertion of the usually placid but now irate Lord Bazelhurst was not quite as momentous as it sounded.  As a matter of fact, the title to the land was vested entirely in his young American wife; his sole possession, according to report, being a title much less substantial but a great deal more picturesque than the large, much-handled piece of paper down in the safety deposit vault—­lying close and crumpled among a million sordid, homely little slips called coupons.

It requires no great stretch of imagination to understand that Lord Bazelhurst had an undesirable neighbor.  That neighbor was young Mr. Shaw—­Randolph Shaw, heir to the Randolph fortune.  It may be fair to state that Mr. Shaw also considered himself to be possessed of an odious neighbor.  In other words, although neither had seen the other, there was a feud between the owners of the two estates that had all the earmarks of an ancient romance.

Lady Bazelhurst was the daughter of a New York millionaire; she was young, beautiful, and arrogant.  Nature gave her youth and beauty; marriage gave her the remaining quality.  Was she not Lady Bazelhurst?  What odds if Lord Bazelhurst happened to be a middle-aged, addle-pated ass?  So much the better.  Bazelhurst castle and the Bazelhurst estates (heavily encumbered before her father came to the rescue) were among the oldest and most coveted in the English market.  Her mother noted, with unctuous joy, that the present Lady Bazelhurst in babyhood had extreme difficulty in mastering the eighth letter of the alphabet, certainly a most flattering sign of natal superiority, notwithstanding the fact that her father was plain old John Banks (deceased), formerly of Jersey City, more latterly of Wall street and St. Thomas’s.

Bazelhurst was a great catch, but Banks was a good name to conjure with, so he capitulated with a willingness that savored somewhat of suspended animation (so fearful was he that he might do something to disturb the dream before it came true).  That was two years ago.  With exquisite irony, Lady Bazelhurst decided to have a country-place in America.  Her agents discovered a glorious section of woodland in the Adirondacks, teeming with trout streams, game haunts, unparalleled scenery; her ladyship instructed them to buy without delay.  It was just here that young Mr. Shaw came into prominence.

His grandfather had left him a fortune and he was looking about for ways in which to spend a portion of it.  College, travel, and society having palled on him, he hied himself into the big hills west of Lake Champlain, searching for beauty, solitude, and life as he imagined it should be lived.  He found and bought five hundred acres of the most beautiful bit of wilderness in the mountains.