ss, suffers horribly. Especially he
suffers when, with a dim sense that in the last resort all power
depends on strength, he finds himself tripped up and laid on his back
by a man physically his inferior. Had the Lord Proprietor inherited the
Islands from a line of ancestors--had his tyranny rested on any feudal
tradition--Eli was Briton enough to have acquiesced or submitted. But
this whipper-snapper had bought the Islands: money--dirty money
alone--gave him power over men who were Islanders by birth and by long
generations of breeding. While the Lord Proprietor talked, Eli felt an
impulse almost uncontrollable to lay hands on him and wring his neck.

The three men had reached Coppa Parc, an enclosure of twelve acres
bounded along the north by the cliffs' edge, and deriving its name from
a mass of granite rock--Carn Coppa--that, rising in ledges from near
the middle of the field, ran northward until it broke away
precipitously, overhanging the sea. The slopes around the base of the
Carn showed here and there an outcrop of granite, but with pockets of
deep soil in which (or so the Lord Proprietor maintained) barley could
be grown at a profit. He appealed to Eli.

"Come, what does Mr. Tregarthen say to it? A piece of ground like
this--hey?--oughtn't to beat a man that has grown barley on Saaron?"

He said it intending no offence, but in a bluff, hearty way, which he
meant to be genial. After a second or two, Eli not answering, he turned
and saw to his amazement that the man was trembling from head to foot
with wrath.

"What right have you? What right----" Eli stammered fiercely, and came
to a full stop, clenching his fists.

The Lord Proprietor stared at him. "My good fellow, I hadn't the
smallest wish to hurt your feelings. What ails you? An innocent remark,
surely!"

"What ails me?" echoed Eli, and stopped again, panting. "Man, have done
with this, and let me go--else I'll not promise to keep my hands off
you!"

For a moment he stood threatening, his eyes--like the eyes of a dumb
animal at bay--travelling from the Lord Proprietor to Sam Leggo. The
blood ebbed from his face, and left it unnaturally white. But of a
sudden he appeared to collect himself; thrust both hands in his
pockets, and, turning his back, walked away resolutely down the slope.

"Well!" said Sam Leggo, after a pause. "Well!"

"The man has never been thwarted before," said the Lord Proprietor, as
they gazed after him together. "That's what c