it.

"What! Break down a fence, and then be afraid to enter! That is the
style of your race, friend Daniel. That is why you never get your
rights, even when you dare to talk of them. I thought you were made of
different stuff. Go home and boast that you shattered my fence, and
then feared to come through it, when I asked you." Carne smiled at his
antagonist, and waved his hand.

Dan leaped in a moment through the hanging splinters, and stood before
the other, with a frown upon his face. "Then mind one thing, sir," he
said, with a look of defiance, while touching his hat from force of
habit, "I pass here, not with your permission, but of right."

"Very well. Let us not split words," said Carne, who had now quite
recovered his native language. "I am glad to find a man that dares to
claim his rights, in the present state of England. I am going towards
Springhaven. Give me the pleasure of your company, and the benefit of
your opinion upon politics. I have heard the highest praise of your
abilities, my friend. Speak to me just as you would to one of your
brother fishermen. By the accident of birth I am placed differently from
you; and in this country that makes all the difference between a man
and a dog, in our value. Though you may be, and probably are, the better
man--more truthful, more courageous, more generous, more true-hearted,
and certain to be the more humble of the two. I have been brought up
where all men are equal, and the things I see here make a new world to
me. Very likely these are right, and all the rest of the world quite
wrong. Englishmen always are certain of that; and as I belong to the
privileged classes, my great desire is to believe it. Only I want to
know how the lower orders--the dregs, the scum, the dirt under our
feet, the slaves that do all the work and get starved for it--how these
trampled wretches regard the question. If they are happy, submissive,
contented, delighted to lick the boots of their betters, my conscience
will be clear to accept their homage, and their money for any stick
of mine they look at. But you have amazed me by a most outrageous act.
Because the lower orders have owned a path here for some centuries, you
think it wrong that they should lose their right. Explain to me, Daniel,
these extraordinary sentiments."

"If you please, sir," said Dan, who was following in the track, though
invited to walk by the side, of Caryl Carne, "I can hardly tell you how
the lower orders fe