his coarse trousers were stuffed, right to the front of Jimmy
Phoebus, and glared at him through his inflamed and unsightly eye.
Jimmy met his scowl with a mildness almost amounting to contempt.

"Hark ye!" spoke the stranger, "you have been a picking a quarrel with
me all yisterday, an' to-day air a beginnin' of it agin. Do you want to
fight?"

"No," said Jimmy, whittling a stick; "I ain't fond of fighting, and I
never do it of a Sunday. I wouldn't be guilty of fightin' you, by
smoke!"

"I have tuk a bigger nug than you and nicked his kicks into the bottom
of his gizzard till his liver-lights fell into my mauleys. So it's nish
or knife betwixt us, my bene cove!"

He put his hand upon his hip, where he carried a sheath-knife.

"Raise that hand," said Jimmy Phoebus, with a quick pass of his
whittling knife to the giant's throat. "Raise it or, by smoke! yer goes
yer jugler."

As Phoebus spoke he lifted one foot, of a prodigious size, as deftly
as an elephant hoisting his trunk, and kicked the man's hand from the
hip pocket without moving either his own body or countenance. It was
done so automatically that the other turned fiercely to see who kicked
him, and his sheath-knife, partly raised, was flung by the force of the
kick several yards away.

"Pick up his knife, Levin," Jimmy said, "or he'll hurt hisself with it."

At this moment Judge Custis came up and pushed the two powerful men
apart.

"Fighting on Sunday in our public street," he exclaimed; "Phoebus, I
wouldn't have thought it of you!"

"This yer bully, Judge," Jimmy said coolly, "started to take Prencess
Anne the fust day, an' ole Meshach's Samson knocked him a sprawlin', an'
Meshach hisself finished him. To-day he starts in to lead off yon poor
imbecile, Levin Dennis, and, as I expresses my opinion of it, he draws
his knife on me; so I takes my foot, Judge, that you have seen me untie
a knot with, and I spiles his wrist with it. Take care of his knife,
Levin,--he's a pore creetur without it."

"We'll have this out, nope for nope, or may I take the morning-drop!"
growled the strange man.

"That kind of language ain't understood in honest company," Jimmy
Phoebus said; "I s'pose it's thieves' lingo, used among your friends,
or, maybe, big words you bully strangers with, when you want to cut a
splurge. Now, as you've been licked by a nigger and kicked by a white
man, maybe you can understand my language! Hark you, too, nigger buyer!
Do you know wher