As he sauntered slowly down the river road that afternoon, smiling retrospectively from time to time as he looked into the swift, narrow stream that had welcomed his adversaries of the morning, he little thought of the encounter in store for him.  The little mountain stream was called a river by courtesy because it was yards wider than the brooks that struggled impotently to surpass it during the rainy season.  But it was deep and turbulent in places and it had a roar at times that commanded the respect of the foolhardy.

“The poor devils might have drowned, eh, Bonaparte?” he mused, addressing the dog at his side.  “Confounded nuisance, getting wet after all, though.  Lord Bazelhurst wants war, does he?  That log down there is the dividing line in our river, eh?  And I have to stay on this side of it.  By George, he’s a mean-spirited person.  And it’s his wife’s land, too.  I wonder what she’s like.  It’s a pity a fellow can’t have a quiet, decent summer up here in the hills.  Still”—­lighting his pipe—­“I daresay I can give as well as I take.  If I stay off his land, they’ll have to keep off of mine.  Hullo, who’s that?  A man, by George, but he looks like a partridge.  As I live, Bonaparte is pointing.  Ha, ha, that’s one on you, Bony.”  Mr. Shaw stepped into the brush at the side of the path and watched the movements of the man at the “log,” now less than one hundred yards away.

Lord Bazelhurst, attired in his brown corduroys and his tan waistcoat, certainly suggested the partridge as he hopped nimbly about in the distant foreground, cocking his ears from time to time with all the aloofness of that wily bird.  He was, strange to relate, some little distance from Bazelhurst territory, an actual if not a confident trespasser upon Shaw’s domain.  His horse, however, was tethered to a sapling on the safe side of the log, comfortably browsing on Bazelhurst grass.  Randolph Shaw, an unseen observer, was considerably mystified by the actions of his unusual visitor.

His lordship paced back and forth with a stride that grew firmer as time brought forth no hostile impediments.  His monocle ever and anon was directed both high and low in search of Shaw or his henchmen, while his face was rapidly resolving itself into a bloom of rage.

“Confound him,” his lordship was muttering, looking at his timepiece with stern disapproval; “he can’t expect me to wait here all day.  I’m on his land and I’ll stay here as long as I like.” (At this juncture he involuntarily measured the distance between himself and the log.) “I knew it was all a bluff, his threat to put me off.  Hang it all, where is the fellow?  I won’t go up to his beastly house.  I won’t gratify him by going up there even to give him his orders.  Demmed cad, blowhard!  Five o’clock, confound him!  I daresay he’s seen me and has crawled off into the underbrush.  He’s afraid of me; he’s a coward.  It is as I feared.  I can’t see the rascal.  There’s only one thing left for me to do.  I’ll pin a note to this tree.  Confound him, he shall hear from me; he’ll have to read it.”