But when it came to their ears that Bassett and his family called his new gravel-walk "The Heir's Walk," and his ridiculous nursery "The Heir's Tower," this roused a bitter animosity, and, indeed, led to reprisals.

Sir Charles built a long wall at the edge of his garden, shutting out "The Heir's Walk" and intercepting the view of his own premises from that walk.
Then Mr.Bassett made a little hill at the end of his walk, so that the heir might get one peep over the wall at his rich inheritance.
Then Sir Charles began to fell timber on a gigantic scale.

He went to work with several gangs of woodmen, and all his woods, which were very extensive, rang with the ax, and the trees fell like corn.

He made no secret that he was going to sell timber to the tune of several thousand pounds and settle it on his wife.
Then Richard Bassett, through Wheeler, his attorney, remonstrated in his own name, and that of his son, against this excessive fall of timber on an entailed estate.
Sir Charles chafed like a lion stung by a gad-fly, but vouchsafed no reply: the answer came from Mr.Oldfield; he said Sir Charles had a right under the entail to fell every stick of timber, and turn his woods into arable ground, if he chose; and even if he had not, looking at his age and his wife's, it was extremely improbable that Richard Bassett would inherit the estates: the said Richard Bassett was not personally named in the entail, and his rights were all in supposition: if Mr.Wheeler thought he could dispute both these positions, the Court of Chancery was open to his client.
Then Wheeler advised Bassett to avoid the Court of Chancery in a matter so debatable; and Sir Charles felled all the more for the protest.

The dead bodies of the trees fell across each other, and daylight peeped through the thick woods.