known or traced. This, sir, is not the conduct of a gentleman; and
argues either actual or premeditated guilt."

"You seem heated, sir, and you also reason in resentment, whatever may
have occasioned it. And so a gentleman is not to make an excursion to a
country town in a quiet way--perhaps to recruit his health, perhaps to
relax his mind, perhaps to gratify a whim--but he must be pounced upon
by some outrageous dispenser of magisterial justice, who thinks,
that, because he wishes to live quietly and unknown, he must be some
cutthroat, or raw-head-and-bloody-bones coming to eat half the country?"

"I dare say, sir, that is all very fine, and very humorous; but when
these mysterious vagabonds--"

The eye of the stranger blazed; lightning itself, in fact, was not
quicker than the fire which gleamed from it, as the baronet uttered the
last words. He walked over deliberately, but with a step replete with
energy and determination:

"How, sir," said he, "do you dare to apply such an expression to me?"

The baronet's eye quailed. He paused a moment, during which he could
perceive that the stranger had a spirit not to be tampered with.

"No, sir," he replied, "not exactly to you, but when persons such as
you come in this skulking way, probably for the purpose of insinuating
themselves into families of rank--"

"Have I, sir, attempted to insinuate myself into yours," asked the
stranger, interrupting him.