“As I know everybody hereabouts, it will be enough if I only see the offender; and how to do that is the question.”
“I am at your orders,” said Repton, raising his whip to a salute.
“It will be somewhat difficult,” said Mary, pondering; “the wood is so overgrown with low copse that one can't ride through it, except along certain alleys. Now we might canter there for hours and see nothing. I have it,” cried she, suddenly; “you shall enter the wood and ride slowly along the green alley, yonder, till you come to the crossroad, when you 'll turn off to the left; while I will remain in observation outside here, so that if our friend make his exit I am sure to overtake him. At all events, we shall meet again at the lower end of the road.”
Repton made her repeat her directions, and then, touching his hat in respectful salutation, rode away to fulfil his mission. A low gate, merely fastened by a loop of iron without a padlock, admitted the lawyer within the precincts, in which he soon discovered that his pace must be a walk, so heavy was the deep clayey soil, littered with fallen leaves and rotting acorns. Great trees bent their massive limbs over his head, and, even leafless as they were, formed a darksome, gloomy aisle, the sides of which were closed in with the wild holly and the broom, and even the arbutus, all intermingled inextricably. There was something solemn even to sadness in the deep solitude, and so Repton seemed to feel as he rode slowly along, alone, tingeing his thoughts of her he had just quitted with melancholy.
“What a girl and what a life!” said he, musingly. “I must tell Martin that this will never do! What can all this devotion end in but disappointment! With the first gleam of their newly acquired power the people will reject these benefits; they will despise the slow-won fruits of industry as the gambler rejects a life of toil. Then will come a reaction—a terrible reaction—with all the semblance of black ingratitude! She will herself be disgusted. The breach once made will grow wider and wider, and at last the demagogue will take the place of the landed proprietor. Estrangement at first, next distrust, and finally dislike, will separate the gentry from the peasantry, and then—I tremble to think of what then!”
As Repton had uttered these words, the sharp bang of a gun startled him, and at the same instant a young fellow sprang from the copse in front of him into the alley. His coarse fustian shooting-jacket, low-crowned oil-skin hat, and leather gaiters seemed to bespeak the professional poacher, and Repton dashed forward with his heavy riding-whip upraised towards him.
“Take care, old gentleman,” said the young man, facing about; “my second barrel is loaded, and if you dare—”
“By Heaven! I'll thrash you, you scoundrel!” said Repton, whose passion was now boiling over by a sudden bound of the cob, which had nearly thrown him from the saddle,—a mischance greeted by a hearty burst of laughter from the stranger.