"He was meddling in affairs that he had nothing to do with."
"What affairs?"
This was rather an embarrassing question to answer.
"The fact is, I caught Jimmy Graham and his brother cutting across my lot—a clear case of trespass—and I was about to give Jimmy a lesson when that brute interfered—"
"What sort of a lesson were you going to give him?" asked the squire, shrewdly.
"Why, you see I had tied the boy to a tree, and was going to touch him gently with a horsewhip, when in jumped this overgrown bully and attacked me."
"Ahem! I begin to see. I hear that the Graham boys' mother was taken sick this afternoon, and the boys were probably going for the doctor."
"So they said, but they had no right to go across my lot."
"It strikes me, Mr. Tarbox, they were excusable under the circumstances."