He raised his hat, and made as if he would pass on.  Now, nothing annoys an angry savage or an uneducated person so much as the perfect coolness of a civilised and cultivated man when he himself is boiling with indignation.  He feels its superiority an affront on his barbarism.  So, with a vulgar oath, Sir Lionel flung himself point-blank in the way.  “Damn it all, no you won’t, sir!” he cried.  “I’ll soon put a stop to all that, I can tell you.  You shan’t go on one step without committing an assault upon me.”  And he drew himself up, four-square, as if for battle.

“Oh, just as you like,” Bertram answered coolly, never losing his temper.  “I’m not afraid of taboos:  I’ve seen too many of them.”  And he gazed at the fat little angry man with a gentle expression of mingled contempt and amusement.

For a minute, Frida thought they were really going to fight, and drew back in horror to await the contest.  But such a warlike notion never entered the man of peace’s head.  He took a step backward for a second and calmly surveyed his antagonist with a critical scrutiny.  Sir Lionel was short and stout and puffy; Bertram Ingledew was tall and strong and well-knit and athletic.  After an instant’s pause, during which the doughty baronet stood doubling his fat fists and glaring silent wrath at his lither opponent, Bertram made a sudden dart forward, seized the little stout man bodily in his stalwart arms, and lifting him like a baby, in spite of kicks and struggles, carried him a hundred paces to one side of the path, where he laid him down gingerly without unnecessary violence on a bed of young bracken.  Then he returned quite calmly, as if nothing had happened, to Frida’s side, with that quiet little smile on his unruffled countenance.

Frida had not quite approved of all this small episode, for she too believed in the righteousness of taboo, like most other Englishwomen, and devoutly accepted the common priestly doctrine, that the earth is the landlord’s and the fulness thereof; but still, being a woman, and therefore an admirer of physical strength in men, she could not help applauding to herself the masterly way in which her squire had carried his antagonist captive.  When he returned, she beamed upon him with friendly confidence.  But Philip was very much frightened indeed.

“You’ll have to pay for this, you know,” he said.  “This is a law-abiding land.  He’ll bring an action against you for assault and battery; and you’ll get three months for it.”

“I don’t think so,” Bertram answered, still placid and unruffled.  “There were three of us who saw him; and it was a very ignominious position indeed for a person who sets up to be a great chief in the country.  He won’t like the little boys on his own estate to know the great Sir Lionel was lifted up against his will, carried about like a baby, and set down in a bracken-bed.  Indeed, I was more than sorry to have to do such a thing to