iends"--he drew a coin
from his pocket, and held it out between his finger and thumb with a
courteous bow towards Sir Lionel--"I gladly tender you a ha'penny
in compensation for any supposed harm we may possibly have done your
imaginary rights by walking through the wood here."

V

For a day or two after this notable encounter between tabooer and
taboo-breaker, Philip moved about in a most uneasy state of mind. He
lived in constant dread of receiving a summons as a party to an assault
upon a most respectable and respected landed proprietor who preserved
more pheasants and owned more ruinous cottages than anybody else (except
the duke) round about Brackenhurst. Indeed, so deeply did he regret his
involuntary part in this painful escapade that he never mentioned a
word of it to Robert Monteith; nor did Frida either. To say the truth,
husband and wife were seldom confidential one with the other. But, to
Philip's surprise, Bertram's prediction came true; they never heard
another word about the action for trespass or the threatened prosecution
for assault and battery. Sir Lionel found out that the person who had
committed the gross and unheard-of outrage of lifting an elderly and
respectable English landowner like a baby in arms on his own estate, was
a lodger at Brackenhurst, variously regarded by those who knew him best
as an escaped lunatic, and as a foreign nobleman in disguise, fleeing
for his life from a charge of complicity in a Nihilist conspiracy: he
wisely came to the conclusion, therefore, that he would not be the first
to divulge the story of his own ignominious defeat, unless he found that
damned radical chap was going boasting around the countryside how he had
balked Sir Lionel. And as nothing was further than boasting from Bertram
Ingledew's gentle nature, and as Philip and Frida both held their peace
for good reasons of their own, the baronet never attempted in any way
to rake up the story of his grotesque disgrace on what he considered
his own property. All he did was to double the number of keepers on the
borders of his estate, and to give them strict notice that whoever
could succeed in catching the "damned radical" in flagrante delicto, as
trespasser or poacher, should receive most instant reward and promotion.

During the next few weeks, accordingly, nothing of importance happened,
from the point of view of the Brackenhurst chronicler; though Bertram
was constantly round at the Monteiths' garde