hat I positively object to your spitting past my ear."

"No, you don't, do you? Now, that is cur'ous. I do believe if you
Britishers had your own way, you'd not let us spit at all. What air you
better than we, that you hold your heads so high, and give yourselves
sich airs! that's what _I_ want to know."

Ned's disgust having subsided, he replied--

"If we do hold our heads high, it is because we are straightforward, and
not afraid to look any man in the face. As to giving ourselves airs,
you mistake our natural reserve and dislike to obtrude ourselves upon
strangers for pride; and in this respect, at least, if in no other, we
are better than you--we don't spit all over each other's floors and
close past each other's noses."

"Wall, now, stranger, if you choose to be resarved, and we choose to be
free-an'-easy, where's the differ? We've a right to have our own
customs, and do as we please as well as you, I guess."

"Hear, hear!" cried Abel Jefferson, commencing to rock himself again,
and to smoke more violently than ever. "What say ye to that, mister?"

"Only this," answered Ned, as he put the finishing touches to his
sketch, "that whereas we claim only the right to do to and with
ourselves what we please, you Yankees claim the right to do to and with
_everybody, else_ what you please. I have no objection whatever to your
spitting, but I do object to your spitting over my shoulder."

"Do you?" said Sam Scott, in a slightly sarcastic tone, "an' suppose I
don't stop firin' over your shoulder, what then?"

"I'll make you," replied Ned, waxing indignant at the man's cool
impudence.

"How?" inquired Sam.

Ned rose and shook back the flaxen curls from his flushed face, as he
replied, "By opening the door and kicking you out of the hut."

He repented of the hasty expression the moment it passed his lips, so he
turned to Jefferson and handed him the drawing for inspection. Sam
Scott remained seated. Whether he felt that Ned was thoroughly capable
of putting his threat in execution or not we cannot tell, but he evinced
no feeling of anger as he continued the conversation.

"I guess if you did that, you'd have to fight me, and you'd find me
pretty smart with the bowie-knife an' the revolver, either in the dark
or in daylight."

Sam here referred to the custom prevalent among the Yankees in some
parts of the United States of duelling with bowie-knives or with pistols
in a darkened room.

"And suppose," an