apart from the law he seems a kindly good-natured person

One last item for the day. I have been reading Hound of the Baskervilles, because I (1) found it in the trash and (2) I am putting off the book I said I would read (The Sun Also Rises, to indulge my interest in stories about erectile dysfunction). It's been mostly a laugh riot, and I will quote the passages of deductive reasoning at some point in the future. But I found this amusing enough to post now:

One other neighbor I have met since I wrote last. This is Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who lives some four miles south of us.

He is an elderly man, red-faced, white-haired, and choleric. His passion is for the British law, and he has spent a large fortune in litigation. He fights for the mere pleasure of fighting, and is equally ready to take up either side of a question, so that it is no wonder that he has found it a costly amusement. Sometimes he will shut up a right of way and defy the parish to make him open it. At others he will with his own hands tear down some other man's gate and declare that a path has existed there from time immemorial, defying the owner to prosecute him for trespass. He is learned in manorial and communal rights, and he applies his knowledge sometimes in favor of the villagers of Fernworthy and sometimes against them, so that he is periodically either carried in triumph down the village street or else burned in effigy, according to his latest exploit. He is said to have about seven lawsuits upon his lands at present, which will probably swallow up the remainder of his fortune, and so draw his sting and leave him harmless for the future. Apart from the law he seems a kindly, good-natured person, and I only mention him because you were particular that I should send some description of the people who surround us. He is curiously employed at present, for, being an amateur astronomer, he has an excellent telescope, with which he lies upon the roof of his house and sweeps the moor all day in the hope of catching a glimpse of the escaped convict. If he would confine his energies to this all would be well, but there are rumors that he intends to prosecute Dr. Mortimer for opening a grave without consent of the next of kin, because he dug up the neolithic skull in the barrow on Long Down.

What the hell am I reading?