ing at me, with his nose cocked up in the air, and
swelling with pride till he's like the frog in the fable."

"How do you know he was sneering at you?" said Fred, who felt stiff,
sore, and as if he would give anything to dismount and lie down among
the soft elastic heather.

"How do I know, sir? Why, because it's his nature to. You don't
understand him as I do. I can't see him, because I can't look through
that hill, but I know as well as can be that he's riding on his horse
close to Master Scarlett, and going off."

"Going off?"

"Yes, sir, in little puffs of laughing. It's his aggravating way. And
he's keeping on saying, `Poor old Samson!' till it makes my blood bile."

"What nonsense! He is more likely to be riding away jaded, and sore,
and disheartened."

"Not he, sir, because he aren't got no heart, and never had none--
leastways, not a proper sort of heart. I can feel it, and I always
could. He's a-sneering at us all, and thinking how he has beaten us,
when, if you had let me have my head, I could have gone at him sword in
hand--"

"And cut his head off?"

"Cut his head off, sir? Why, it aren't worth cutting off. I mean to
keep my sword, which is a real good bit o' stuff, and as sharp as a
scythe, for better heads than his. I wouldn't stoop to do it. No,
Master Fred, I tell you what I'd have done: I'd have ridden up to him
right afore 'em all, and I should have said, `Nat, my lad, your time's
come;' and I should have laid hold of him by the scruff of the neck, and
beat him with the flat of the blade till he went down on his knees and
said he wouldn't do so any more."

"Do what any more, Samson?"

"Everything as he have been doing."

"And suppose he wouldn't have let you beat him before all the others?"

"Wouldn't have let me, Master Fred? He'd have been obliged to. I
should have made him."

"You are too modest, Samson," said Fred, laughing.

"Oh no, I'm not, sir--not a bit. I wish sometimes I was a bit more so.
But you should have let me go at him, sir. I'd have made him run, like
a sheep with a dog at his heels."

"Ah, Samson," cried Fred, wearily, "it's sore work when brothers are
fighting against each other."

"No worse, sir, than two such friends as you and Master Scarlett was.
Why, you was more than brothers. Oh, I don't like this here at all."

"What?"

"Running away with our tails between our legs, like so many dogs with
stones thrown at 'em."

"It is miserable wo