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.

“The next time I’ll take better aim!” called Archie, turning away.  “I’ll shoot as straight as the man who gave your uncle his deserts down at Poplar Spring!”

Whistling to his dogs, he ran on for a short distance; then vaulting the rail fence he disappeared into the tangle of willows beside the stream which flowed down from the mill.

While he watched him the anger in Gay’s face faded slowly into disgust.

“Now I’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest,” he thought, annoyed by his impetuosity.  “Who, I wonder, was the fellow, and what a fool—­what a tremendous fool I have been!”

With his love of ease, of comfort, of popularity, the situation appeared to him to be almost intolerable.  The whole swarm would be at his head now, he supposed; for instead of silencing the angry buzzing around his uncle’s memory, he had probably raised a tumult which would deafen his own ears before it was over.  Here, as in other hours and scenes, his resolve had acted less as a restraint than as a spur which had impelled him to the opposite extreme of conduct.

Still rebuking his impulsiveness, he shouldered his gun again, and followed slowly in the direction Archie had taken.  The half bared willows by the brook distilled sparkling drops as the small red sun rose higher over the meadows, and it was against the shimmering background of foliage, that the figure of Blossom Revercomb appeared suddenly out of the mist.  Her scant skirts were lifted from the cobwebs on the grass, and her mouth was parted while she called softly after a cow that had strayed down to the willows.