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The Ball and the Cross

at him with a steady smile. “A large proprietor.”

Turnbull’s eye grew even more offensive, and he began biting his red beard; but MacIan seemed to recognise a type with which he could deal and continued quite easily:

“I am sure that a man like you will not need to be told that one sees and does a good many things that do not get into the newspapers. Things which, on the whole, had better not get into the newspapers.”

The smile of the large proprietor broadened for a moment under his loose, light moustache, and the other continued with increased confidence:

“One sometimes wants to have it out with another man. The police won’t allow it in the streets—and then there’s the County Council—and in the fields even nothing’s allowed but posters of pills. But in a gentleman’s garden, now——”

The strange gentleman smiled again and said, easily enough: “Do you want to fight? What do you want to fight about?”

MacIan had understood his man pretty well up to that point; an instinct common to all men with

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