himself had best right of all men to be. It was just in this state of
feeling that he found his course arrested by a hand upon his shoulder.

"What business have you here?" was the question sounded in his ear; and,
starting, he found himself in the grasp, as his blood tingled to know, of
a gentleman in a shooting-dress, who looked at him with a wrathful brow.
"Are you a poacher, or what?"

Be the case what it might, Middleton's blood boiled at the grasp of that
hand, as it never before had done in the course of his impulsive life. He
shook himself free, and stood fiercely before his antagonist, confronting
him with his uplifted stick, while the other, likewise, appeared to be
shaken by a strange wrath.

"Fellow," muttered he--"Yankee blackguard!--impostor--take yourself oil
these grounds. Quick, or it will be the worse for you!"

Middleton restrained himself. "Mr. Eldredge," said he, "for I believe I
speak to the man who calls himself owner of this land on which we
stand,--Mr. Eldredge, you are acting under a strange misapprehension of
my character. I have come hither with no sinister purpose, and am
entitled, at the hands of a gentleman, to the consideration of an
honorable antagonist, even if you deem me one at all. And perhaps, if you
think upon the blue chamber and the ebony cabinet, and the secret
connected with it,"--

"Villain, no more!" said Eldredge; and utterly mad with rage, he
presented his gun at Middleton; but even at the moment of doing so, he
partly restrained himself, so far as, instead of shooting him, to raise
the butt of his gun, and strike a blow at him. It came down heavily on