"I didn't know but you might want me," replied the manager; but the demonstrative person was his employer's brother, and he refrained from using the strong language that came to his tongue's end. "I don't want you for anything just now, Levi," replied the planter, sorry that there should have been a witness to the stormy interview with his brother; and he wondered if he had not been too plain-spoken, mild and dignified as he had been. "What do you mean, you scoundrel, by stickin' your nose in where you're not wanted?" demanded Titus savagely, as he shook his fist, relieved from duty before the planter, in the direction of the overseer. Levi wheeled his horse so that he crowded the angry man out of his place, and made him spring to keep out of the way of the fiery animal; but he made no reply to the abuse cast upon him. Noah nodded his head in the direction of the mansion, and the manager rode off, though it was evident to his employer that he was itching to lay hands on the turbulent visitor. "I hate that villain!" gasped Titus. "And he despises you as thoroughly as you hate him; so there is no love lost. But I think you had better conduct yourself a little more peaceably, Titus; for I do not like to have the people on the plantation see that there is any difficulty between us, for we are brothers, I wish you to remember. Perhaps we had better drop the subject where it is, for it is almost suppertime," said Noah with the most conciliatory tone and manner. "Not jest yet," returned Titus warmly. "I said that valuation was a fraud, meant to cheat me out of my rightful due; and you told me I was drunk, which ain't no kind of an argument." "I did not say that exactly; but if it was an argument for anything, it was that we should talk this matter over some time when you had not drunk anything." "I drink something everyday; and I have a perfect right to do so." "I don't dispute it." "Dunk gave you all the niggers, and did not put them in the valuation. Wasn't that cheating me out of my share of the thirty thousand they would bring even in these shaky times?" "I don't think it was. I repeat that the colonel had a perfect right, just as good a right as you have to drink whiskey, though I don't do so, to dispose of his property as he pleased," added Noah, looking down at the planks of the bridge, and remaining for a minute in deep thought. "That ain't no argument!" blustered Titus. "The law gives a man's property to his brothers and sisters when he leaves no parents or children; and every honest and just man does the same thing." "I did not mean to say anything to anybody about the servants on the place; but I feel obliged to speak to you about them so far as to tell the facts relating to them," said Noah when he had come to this conclusion.