unexpected denial in ipchains log

[Allen Wayne Best <debian@atoka-software.com>]

hello:

i am getting an unexpected error show up in the ipchains log: namely, what 
looks like a denial of response to an attempt to connect to a mail server. a 
sample from the ipchains log is:

Aug 19 12:50:55 mesozoic kernel: Packet log: input DENY eth2 PROTO=6  \
66.33.74.40:25 207.20.242.142:3723 L=60 S=0x00 I=1883 F=0x4000 T=51 (#30) 

the ipchains rules for port 25 are:

ACCEPT     tcp  !y----  anywhere             awbesq.vip.best.com    \
     smtp ->   1024:65535
ACCEPT     tcp  ------  anywhere             awbesq.vip.best.com   \
     1024:65535  ->   smtp
ACCEPT     tcp  ------  awbesq.vip.best.com  anywhere              \
      1024:65535 ->   smtp
ACCEPT     tcp  !y----  awbesq.vip.best.com  anywhere                \
       smtp ->   1024:65535

is this expected? the only rule that i can see that may affect this is 

DENY       all  ----l-  66.0.0.0/8           anywhere              n/a 

which is one of the rules from "linux firewalls" by ziegler (pp 74-5).

$ nslookup 66.33.74.40
Server:  mesozoic.atoka.org
Address:  192.168.10.49

Name:    tammen.net
Address:  66.33.74.40 

-- 
regards,
allen
atoka-software