He stuck the little piece of pasteboard into the magistrate’s hand.
“Confound your card, sir! I—”
“Now—now, look here,” said Pratt, button-holing him; “don’t be cross. Let me ask you this—Is it wise of you—a justice of the peace—to set your men on, right or wrong, to break that peace?”
Sir Hampton Rea stopped short for a moment or two, and then gasped, seemed as if he would choke, and ended by snatching his coat away from Pratt’s grasp.
“Darley, Sanders, come back—go back,” he said at last. “These people shall hear from me.”
The rat-trap man stood looking evilly at the young keeper, and the Scotch gardener took a pinch of snuff. Then they slowly followed their master, and the coast was clear.
“You’re sure, I suppose, about this tongue of land?” said Pratt. “By Jove! what a rage, though, the old boy was in.”
“Sure? yes—oh yes,” said Trevor. “Wasn’t it here that they sunk the shaft for the copper mine, Humphrey?”
“Yes, sir, twenty yards farther on, under that clump. It’s ’most filled up, though, now.”
“To be sure, I recollect the spot well enough now. But this is a bad job, Franky,” he continued, in an undertone. “I wanted to be on the best of terms with my neighbours.”