Hugh granted the pair a slight nod. As they went, Lucian, looking back over Julian's shoulder with eyes bigger than ever, said: "We'll wake up in the morning without the least change of feeling for this boat's owners, their relatives, or their hirelings." The relative and the hireling glanced sharply at each other. But then Hugh said quietly: "A man can't quarrel with boys, Mr. Watson." "No," mused the pilot aloud as he watched the pair go below, "but he can wait. They'll soon be men." "And this be all forgotten," said Hugh. "Not by them!" rejoined Mr. Watson. "They'll remember it ef they have to tattoo it--on their stomachs." "I should have managed them better," said Hugh. "Lord, boy, nobody's ever managed _them_ sence they was born." The speaker sauntered back toward the pilot-house, coining rhetoric in his mind to relieve his rage. "It's only the long-looked-for come at last," he thought, "and come _toe_ last." As he resumed the bench behind his partner his wrath at length burst out: "Well, of all the hell-fry I ever come across----!" "And they 'llow to keep things fryin'," said his mate. Which made Watson even more rhetorical. "Yes, it's their only salvation from their rotten insignificance." He meditated. "And yet--hnn!" He was about to say something much kindlier when suddenly he laughed down from a side window upon the twins returned. "Well, I'll swear!" "We heard, sir," said Julian with a lordly bow. "And you," chimed Lucian, "shall hear later." Rather aimlessly they turned and again disappeared, and after a moment or two the man at the wheel asked, with playful softness, with his eyes on the roof below: "D'you reckon yon other two will ever manage to offset the tricks o' Hayle's twins?" His partner rose and looked down. The old nurse and the third Hayle brother stood side by side watching the beautiful low-lying plantations unbrokenly swing by behind the embankments of the eastern shore. The level fields of young sugar-cane reposed in a twilight haze, while the rows of whitewashed slave cabins, the tall red chimneys of the great sugar-houses, and the white-pillared verandas of the masters' dwellings embowered in their evergreen gardens, still showed clear in the last lights of day. But the query was not as to the nurse and the boy. Near them stood Ramsey, with arms akimbo, once more conversing with Hugh. "Oh!" said the glowing Watson. "If that's to be the game, Ned, I'm in it, sir! I'm in it!" "Just's well, Watsy. You're in the twins' game anyhow." Meantime Ramsey's talk flowed on like brook water, Hugh's meeting it like the brook's bowlders: "Guess who's at the head of the table!" "Who? my grandfather?" "No, he's 'way down at the men's end." "Well, then, father?" "Yes! And who's sitting next him--on his right?" "Your mother?" "Yes! And guess who's going to sit at the head of the children's table. You!" "How do you know that?"