My retort was the cheap expedient of re-echoing, “Who the devil are you?”
“Well,” he said.
“I’m coming along this path if I like,” I said. “See? It’s a public path—just as this used to be public land. You’ve stolen the land—you and yours, and now you want to steal the right of way. You’ll ask us to get off the face of the earth next. I sha’n’t oblige. See?”
I was shorter and I suppose a couple of years younger than he, but I had the improvised club in my pocket gripped ready, and I would have fought with him very cheerfully. But he fell a step backward as I came toward him.
“Socialist, I presume?” he said, alert and quiet and with the faintest note of badinage.
“One of many.”
“We’re all socialists nowadays,” he remarked philosophically, “and I haven’t the faintest intention of disputing your right of way.”
“You’d better not,” I said.
“No!”
“No.”