“Why—do you not find this a pleasant plan?” asked the Baron, surprised.
“It seems to me, sir,” stuttered Geoffrey, beating his brains for every next word, “it seems to me a monstrous pity to destroy this Dragon so. He is a rare curiosity.”
“Did you expect me to clap him in a box-stall and feed him?” inquired the Baron with scorn.
“Why, no, sir. But since it is I who have tracked, stalked, and taken him with the help of no other huntsman,” said Geoffrey, “I make bold to think the laws of sport vest the title to him in me.”
“No such thing,” said Sir Godfrey. “You have captured him in my cellar. I know a little law, I hope.”
“The law about wild beasts in Poictiers——” Geoffrey began.
“What care I for your knavish and perverted foreign legalities over the sea?” snorted Sir Godfrey. “This is England. And our Common Law says you have trespassed.”
“My dear sir,” said Geoffrey, “this wild beast came into your premises after I had marked him.”
“Don’t dear sir me!” shouted the Baron. “Will you hear the law for what I say? I tell you this Dragon’s my dragon. Don’t I remember how trespass was brought against Ralph de Coventry, over in Warwickshire? Who did no more than you have done. And they held him. And there it was but a little pheasant his hawk had chased into another’s warren—and you’ve chased a dragon, so the offence is greater.”
“But if—” remonstrated the youth, “if a fox——”