"Don't you talk to me like that. For two cents I'd knock your head off."
"For a money consideration I've no doubt you'd try it; but I'll bet you a thousand dollars you can't knock one side of it off."
"You'll bet a thousand dollars! I'd like to know where you'd get 'em."
"Right in the house. Half the money that's there belongs to me. It all belongs to me just as much as to you."
"Oh, indeed! And you'd like to knock me in the head and get possession of it, wouldn't you?"
"No. But I'd like to jam some sense into your thick skull, and bleed out some of the meanness and selfishness that fills your heart."
"Faw de Lo'd's sake. Is you boys a qwa'lin'?" demanded old black Betsy, coming up on the porch; and they slunk away ashamed before her.
But when Jacob had once "read the Declaration of Independence," as he styled his self-assertion against Peter's domineering disposition, he soon fell into the habit of repeating the precedent, and as Peter did not willingly or easily relinquish his sovereignty—the prerogative of seniority in his opinion—they had many a wordy wrangle, and not infrequently uttered to each other such threats as might well have seemed ominous if overheard by strangers. And they were overheard, and their quarrels were repeated and magnified in circulation from mouth to mouth; so that it was not long before it became matter of common notoriety in the community that the two old men had actually had knock-down fights; and once, when Peter was laid up with the rheumatism, and Jacob was nursing him most tenderly and assiduously—notwithstanding the invalid's temper was just then even worse than usual—it was popularly believed that the elder brother had been almost killed by the younger in a bloody combat, and there were those who even talked of "speaking to the squire about it." But the brothers never did come to blows, and the only immediate result of their quarrels was a formal division between them of the money on hand in the house, after which it was allowed to lie in two parts, as useless as it before was in one. Jacob indeed had some idea of giving his share to Mary Wallace, but could not exactly make up his mind upon what pretence or with what excuse to offer it, and feared to offend her.
One day he sat on a little mossy bank by the roadside when she passed him, coming from the woods with a bunch of wild flowers in her hands and going toward her uncle's house. She was close to him, but did not see him. Her thoughts were upon her absent lover, and in the exaltation of her happiness she was oblivious to all about her but her own joy. The old man's eyes were upon her, however, reading her secret in her countenance transfigured by love and hope. Ah! how her look brought back her mother's face to his remembrance.
"Little she would care," he said softly to himself, "for the money now. She has love; and that is better than gold."