Probably Noah Lyon had never felt anything like the emotion of anger in his being against his brother until they met that day on the bridge. As one and another had said several times, no two men of the same blood and lineage could have been more differently constituted. Noah had been a diligent student as a boy, and a constant reader in his maturity; while Titus had been the black sheep of the family, had neglected his studies in his youth, and did not even read a newspaper in his manhood, unless for a special purpose. Titus could read and write, and knew enough of arithmetic to enable him to keep the accounts of his business. Whatever he learned after he left school he gathered from the speech of people; and as his associates were not of the intelligent class in his native town any more than they were in his new home, his education was very limited and his moral aims, if he could be said to have any, were not elevated enough to keep him very far within the limits of the law, which were his principal tests between right and wrong. Before he was twenty-one he obtained a position to drive a stage on a twenty-mile route, so that he spent every other night at a tavern; and this did not improve his manners or his morals. As a boy he had become disgusted with farming, and had learned the trade of a mason, working at it three years. Like his elder brother, he was a horse fancier, and was a skilful driver. An accident to the old stage-driver placed him on the box, and when the place became permanent he was only twenty years old. With so little intellectual and moral foundation as he had laid for his future character, it was a misfortune for him that he was then a "good-looking fellow." He boarded at the tavern, and paid only two dollars a week in consideration of his position, for it was believed that he had some influence with his passengers. He was well supplied with money for one of his age in the country, and he spent all he had. He was an agile dancer, which, with his good looks, made him popular in the town, especially with the girls. Amelia Lenox was a pretty girl. She had a fancy for the handsome stage-driver; and, in spite of the earnest objections of her father and mother, she accepted him as her husband, and they were married. Titus took a cottage near the tavern, and for a year, with the help of his and her father, they got along very well. All of a sudden a railroad shot through the town, and the business of the place was gone in the twinkling of an eye. The wages of Titus stopped, and he had a wife and child to support. He went to his father for advice. The mason, who had done a good business in the town and its vicinity, had grown old. Hopestill Lyon, the grandfather of the boys, was his best friend, and bought out his business for Titus.