“What are you doing in here?” the young man demanded angrily. “Do you see what you did. I suppose you’re the youngster that was in here last night after grapes.” He held his captive at arm’s length, though indeed Hervey did not repeat the vicious assault with his feet.
“I came in after the ball,” he said.
“Yes, and did you see the sign out there as big as a house, or are you blind?”
It was quite like Hervey that he had seen no sign; he seldom saw them.
“Look at what you’ve done,” said his captor. “How much damage do you suppose you’ve done there? Look at that. Look at that other bush. Look at those two there. You’d think an earthquake had struck them. Do you think you can do fifty or a hundred dollars’ worth of damage to get a baseball? What do you think of this?” he added, turning to another man who had just appeared. The man shook his head dubiously. “Well, he’s going to learn his lesson this time.”
“It’s the first time I was ever in here,” said Hervey fearfully.
“And it will be the last,” said his captor. “You heard what the governor told me before he left, Jake, that I should have the law on any more trespassers? I’m expected to run this place, look after fifty acres—cows, horses, poultry, and oversee three acres of this fancy stuff—and look at it! Who got blamed about the rhododendrons—you remember? I’ve got to be superintendent and detective and everything else here. Go get Charlie and tell him to come and fix these things up. You’d think a cyclone hit them.”
“I didn’t mean⸺” Hervey began.
“Oh, I know,” the man snapped. “You didn’t know private property has to be respected. Well, I’m going to do what I was told to do, then maybe you’ll learn a lesson. Every time anybody comes over that fence he lands on my head, it seems. I’m the one to get the blame. You go get Charlie; I’ll take care of this kid.”
If Hervey had not been too fearful to think he might have surmised that the anger of this man, evidently superintendent of a large estate, had not been aroused simply by this particular instance of trespass, even with its destructive accompaniment. The man had evidently been harassed by trespassers on the one hand and by his employer on the other. Hervey had precipitated himself into those beautiful gardens at a most unpropitious time. He was evidently to be the terrible example to others who had made free in those fruited and flowered precincts.