“Honest!” Godfrey almost screamed. “Jest listen to him, now! That’s what makes me ’spise them Gordons so. They can’t keep their big ’ristocratic ideas to their selves, but must tell ’em to my boys, an’ larn one of ’em to say ‘father’ an’ ‘mother,’ ’stead of callin’ us ‘pop’ an’ ‘mam,’ like he had oughter do. An’ then to talk about my spendin’ my time a diggin’ an’ a huntin’ fur that thar bar’l, an’ arter findin’ it, to give it up to them as has got more’n their share already, an’ here’s us as poor as Job’s turkey! No, sir,” said Godfrey, emphatically. “If I find that thar bar’l I’ll keep it, an’ say nothing to nobody.” “But it belongs to the Gordons,” said David, not at all daunted by his father’s speech, “and you have no right to lay a finger on it.” “Wal, you’ll see if I don’t lay two whole hands onto it if I can find it; an’ if I don’t find it, it won’t be kase I don’t do no diggin’, I bet ye. Jest think of it,” said Godfrey, growing animated over the prospect of so great and sudden wealth. “Here’s us been a livin’ like the pigs in the gutter all these years, when we might have been ridin’ our own hosses an’ growin’ fat off the best kind of grub! Eighty thousand dollars! Enough to fill a hul bar’l! Why, one day, in the good old times, when I was a talkin’ with the gen’ral, he says to me: ‘Godfrey, how much is you wuth?’ Wal, I didn’t know, kase I hadn’t never thought of it none; but I told him I had so many niggers, wuth so much a head; so many cow brutes; so many hoss an’ mule brutes; so much land; an’ so many pig brutes runnin’ in the swamp. The gen’ral he figures it up, an’ tells me I wus wuth nigh on to twelve or fifteen thousand dollars, most likely it was nigher fifteen nor twelve. I tell you I felt big arter that. I held my head up high, like a steer in the corn, an’ felt like axin’ every man I met did he know I wus wuth fifteen thousand dollars, an’ it all made with these yer two hands, too? But _eighty_ thousand! Whew! Why didn’t I think of that bar’l long ago? I reckin I’ll go down to the landin’ an’ ax Silas Jones will he trust me fur some store tobacker. I can tell him that I’ll be able to buy his hul consarn out next week!” As Godfrey said this he arose from his barrel, and, taking his rifle down from its place over the door, went out of the cabin followed by Dan, who also carried a rifle on his shoulder. David and his mother watched them in silence until they had passed down the road out of sight, and then turned and looked at each other. “Is it true about the barrel?” asked the boy at length.