ne fellow, and everybody admires you. But if a
shoemaker's son in Mellor follows his, he is a villain and a thief, and
the policeman and the magistrate make for him at once."

"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