“Creator,” answered Juba, tossing back his head with an air of superiority; “Creator;—that, I consider, is an assumption.”
“O, my dear brother,” cried Agellius, “don’t go on in that dreadful way!”
“ ‘Go on!’ who began? Is one man to lay down the law, and not the other too? Is it so generally received, this belief of a Creator? Who have brought in the belief? The Christians. ’Tis the Christians that began it. The world went on very well without it before their rise. And now, who began the dispute but you?”
“Well, if I did,” answered Agellius; “but I didn’t. You began in coming here; what in the world are you come for? by what right do you disturb me at this hour?”
There was no appearance of anger in Juba; he seemed as free from feeling of every kind, from what is called heart, as if he had been a stone. In answer to his brother’s question, he quietly said, “I have been down there,” pointing in the direction of the woods.
An expression of sharp anguish passed over his brother’s face, and for a moment he was silent. At length he said, “You don’t mean to say you have been down to poor mother?”
“I do,” said Juba.
There was again a silence for a little while; then Agellius renewed the conversation. “You have fallen off sadly, Juba, in the course of the last several years.”
Juba tossed his head, and crossed his legs.
“At one time I thought you would have been baptized,” his brother continued.