“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.”