Page:The Ball and the Cross.djvu/271

have been expected. He was a gentleman; that is, he had social presence of mind, whether for kindness or for insolence.

“Can I do anything for you?” he said, at last.

MacIan bowed. “You can extend to us your pardon,” he said, for he also came of a whole race of gentlemen—of gentlemen without shirts to their backs. “I am afraid we are trespassing. We have just come over the wall.”

“Over the wall?” repeated the smiling old gentleman, still without letting his surprise come uppermost.

“I suppose I am not wrong, sir,” continued MacIan, “in supposing that these grounds inside the wall belong to you?”

The man in the panama looked at the ground and smoked thoughtfully for a few moments, after which he said, with a sort of matured conviction:

“Yes, certainly; the grounds inside the wall really belong to me, and the grounds outside the wall, too.”

“A large proprietor, I imagine,” said Turnbull, with a truculent eye.

“Yes,” answered the old gentleman, looking