rd, I say, instantly!"

Bertram looked at him with a fixed gaze. Sir Lionel, having had good
proof of his antagonist's strength, kept his distance cautiously.

"Certainly NOT, my good friend," Bertram replied, in a firm tone.
"Why should _I_, who am the injured and insulted party, assist YOU in
identifying me? It was you who aggressed upon my free individuality. If
you want to call in the aid of an unjust law to back up an unjust and
irrational taboo, you must find out for yourself who I am, and where I
come from. But I wouldn't advise you to do anything so foolish. Three of
us here saw you in the ridiculous position into which by your obstinacy
you compelled me to put you; and you wouldn't like to hear us recount it
in public, with picturesque details, to your brother magistrates. Let me
say one thing more to you," he added, after a pause, in that peculiarly
soft and melodious voice of his. "Don't you think, on reflection--even
if you're foolish enough and illogical enough really to believe in
the sacredness of the taboo by virtue of which you try to exclude your
fellow-tribesmen from their fair share of enjoyment of the soil of
England--don't you think you might at any rate exercise your imaginary
powers over the land you arrogate to yourself with a little more
gentleness and common politeness? How petty and narrow it looks to use
even an undoubted right, far more a tribal taboo, in a tyrannical and
needlessly aggressive manner! How mean and small and low and churlish!
The damage we did your land, as you call it--if we did any at all--was
certainly not a ha'pennyworth. Was it consonant with your dignity as a
chief in the tribe to get so hot and angry about so small a value? How
grotesque to make so much fuss and noise about a matter of a ha'penny!
We, who were the aggrieved parties, we, whom you attempted to debar
by main force from the common human right to walk freely over earth
wherever there's nothing sown or planted, and who were obliged to remove
you as an obstacle out of our path, at some personal inconvenience"--(he
glanced askance at his clothes, crumpled and soiled by Sir Lionel's
unseemly resistance)--"WE didn't lose our tempers, or attempt to revile
you. We were cool and collected. But a taboo must be on its very last
legs when it requires the aid of terrifying notices at every corner in
order to preserve it; and I think this of yours must be well on the way
to abolition. Still, as I should like to part fr