“The fellow has brought actions against me for trespass, and I have brought actions against him for trespass,” returned Mr Boythorn. “By heaven, he is the proudest fellow breathing. It is morally impossible that his name can be Sir Leicester. It must be Sir Lucifer.”

“Complimentary to our distant relation!” said my guardian laughingly, to Ada and Richard.

“I would beg Miss Clare’s pardon and Mr Carstone’s pardon,” resumed our visitor, “if I were not reassured by seeing in the fair face of the lady, and the smile of the gentleman, that it is quite unnecessary, and that they keep their distant relation at a comfortable distance.”

“Or he keeps us,” suggested Richard.

“By my soul!” exclaimed Mr Boythorn, suddenly firing another volley, “that fellow is, and his father was, and his grandfather was, the most stiff-necked, arrogant, imbecile, pig-headed numskull, ever, by some inexplicable mistake of Nature, born in any station of life but a walking-stick’s! The whole of that family are the most solemnly conceited and consummate blockheads! — But it’s no matter; he should not shut up my path, if he were fifty baronets melted into one, and living in a hundred Chesney Wolds, one within another, like the ivory balls in a Chinese carving. The fellow, by his agent, or secretary, or somebody, writes to me, ‘Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, presents his compliments to Mr Lawrence Boythorn, and has to call his attention to the fact that the green pathway by the old parsonage-house, now the property of Mr Lawrence Boythorn, is Sir Leicester’s right of way, being in fact a portion of the park of Chesney Wold; and that Sir Leicester finds it convenient to close up the same.’ I write to the fellow, ‘Mr Lawrence Boythorn presents his compliments to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and has to call his attention to the fact that he totally denies the whole of Sir Leicester Dedlock’s positions on every possible subject, and has to add, in reference to closing up the pathway, that he will be glad to see the man who may undertake to do it.’ The fellow sends a most abandoned villain with one eye, to construct a gateway. I play upon that execrable scoundrel with a fire-engine, until the breath is nearly driven out of his body. The fellow erects a gate in the night. I chop it down and burn it in the morning. He sends his myrmidons to come over the fence, and pass and repass. I catch them in humane man-traps, fire split peas at their legs, play upon them with the engine — resolve to free mankind from the insupportable burden of the existence of those lurking ruffians. He brings actions for trespass; I bring actions for trespass. He brings actions for assault and battery; I defend them, and continue to assault and batter. Ha, ha, ha!”

To hear him say all this with unimaginable energy, one might have thought him the angriest of mankind. To see him, at the very same time, looking at the bird now perched upon his thumb, and softly smoothing its feathers with his forefinger, one might have thought him the gentlest. To hear him laugh, and see the broad good-nature of his face then, one might have supposed that he had not a care in the world, or a dispute, or a dislike, but that his whole existence was a summer joke.

“No, no,” he said, “no closing up of my paths, by any Dedlock! Though I willingly confess,” here he softened in a moment, “that Lady Dedlock is the most accomplished lady in the world, to whom I would do any homage that a plain gentleman, and no baronet with a head seven hundred years thick, may. A man who joined his regiment at twenty, and, within a week, challenged the most imperious and presumptuous coxcomb of a commanding officer that ever drew the breath of life through a tight waist — and got broke for it — is not the man to be walked over, by all the Sir Lucifers, dead or alive, locked or unlocked. Ha, ha, ha!”

“Nor the man to allow his junior to be walked over, either?” said my Guardian.

“Most assuredly not!” said Mr Boythorn, clapping him on the shoulder with an air of protection, that had something serious in it, though he laughed. “He will stand by the low boy, always. Jarndyce, you may rely upon him! But speaking of this trespass — with apologies to Miss Clare and Miss Summerson for the length at which I have pursued so dry a subject — is there nothing for me from your men, Kenge and Carboy?”