“But I don’t steal his chickens!” cried the lad, choking with arguments and exasperation; “and why should he steal my pheasants?  I paid for the eggs, I paid for the hens to sit on ’em, I paid for the coops to rear them in, I paid the men to watch them, I paid for the barley to feed them with:  why is he to be allowed to take my property, and I am to be sent to jail if I take his?”

“Property!” said Marcella, scornfully.  “You can’t settle everything nowadays by that big word.  We are coming to put the public good before property.  If the nation should decide to curtail your ‘right,’ as you call it, in the general interest, it will do it, and you will be left to scream.”

She had flung her arm round the back of her chair, and all her lithe young frame was tense with an eagerness, nay, an excitement, which drew Hallin’s attention.  It was more than was warranted by the conversation, he thought.

“Well, if you think the abolition of game preserving would be popular in the country, Miss Boyce, I’m certain you make a precious mistake,” cried Leven.  “Why, even you don’t think it would be, do you, Mr. Hallin?” he said, appealing at random in his disgust.

“I don’t know,” said Hallin, with his quiet smile.  “I rather think, on the whole, it would be.  The farmers put up with it, but a great many of them don’t like it.  Things are mended since the Ground Game Act, but there are a good many grievances still left.”

“I should think there are!” said Marcella, eagerly, bending forward to him.  “I was talking to one of our farmers the other day whose land goes up to the edge of Lord Winterbourne’s woods. ’They don’t keep their pheasants, miss,’ he said. ’I do.  I and my corn.  If I didn’t send a man up half-past five in the morning, when the ears begin to fill, there’d be nothing left for us.’  ’Why don’t you complain to the agent?’ I said.  ‘Complain!  Lor’ bless you, miss, you may complain till you’re black in the face.  I’ve allus found—­an’ I’ve been here, man and boy, thirty-two year—­as how Winterbournes generally best it.’ There you have the whole thing in a nutshell.  It’s a tyranny—­a tyranny of the rich.”

Flushed and sarcastic, she looked at Frank Leven; but Hallin had an uncomfortable feeling that the sarcasm was not all meant for him.  Aldous was sitting with his hands on his knees, and his head bent forward a little.  Once, as the talk ran on, Hallin saw him raise his grey eyes to the girl beside him, who certainly did not notice it, and was not thinking of him.  There was a curious pain and perplexity in the expression, but something else too—­a hunger, a dependence, a yearning, that for an instant gripped the friend’s heart.

“Well, I know Aldous doesn’t agree with you, Miss Boyce,” cried Leven, looking about him in his indignation for some argument that should be final.  “You don’t, do you, Aldous?  You don’t think the country would be the better, if we could do away with game to-morrow?”