“So help me, God!  I will kill you!”

His words were near being verified; already the fallen boy’s mouth had unclosed, the red of his face turned to livid purple, and his eyes stared wildly, when Mrs. Blount, pale, with disordered attire, as if she had but just risen and dressed hastily, ran, screaming, down the hill.  Seizing John around the waist, she dragged him back, and flung him to the ground, exclaiming,—­

“Oh, my sons! my sons! are you not brothers?  Will you never be at peace?”

At this moment, Isaac arrived, breathless with running, at the spot.  When she saw him, the widow ceased speaking, and made no further allusion to the quarrel while he remained.  However, she gladly accepted his offered assistance in lifting James, who lay gasping, and wellnigh dead.  As they turned towards the house, John rose, sullenly, and wrapping a handkerchief round his wounded arm, which was bleeding profusely, he glanced scowlingly at his brother.

“He will get over this,” he muttered, with an oath; “but, sooner or later, I swear I will kill him!”

Without noticing his mother’s appealing look, he walked back to the tree where the dead pet lay.

The half-strangled boy was carried to his bed, and a few simple remedies restored him to consciousness.  As soon as possible, Mrs. Blount dismissed Isaac, declining his offers of going for a doctor, with cold thanks.  As he went back to resume his interrupted blackberrying, he saw John sitting at the foot of the tree.  He had dug a hole in which to bury the poor squirrel; it lay on his knee, a stream of dark gore oozing through its tiny white teeth.  John was vainly endeavoring to wipe this with the handkerchief already stained with his own blood, while his hot tears fell fast and heavy.

As John had said, James recovered from the choking, and the only apparent results of the fight were that both boys were scarred for life.  John bore on his right wrist the impression of his brother’s teeth; and James’s throat was disfigured by two deep, black marks, on each side, which were quite visible till his beard concealed them.  Yet, I doubt not, that desperate struggle, in that dawning summer-day, laid the foundation of the inextinguishable hatred that blasted those men’s lives and was to be quenched only in death.

Several years passed after this, in which very little was known of what passed at the lonely house.  The boys were old enough to perform most of the work of the farm, so that they no longer hired laborers except at harvest.  Mrs. Blount had herself given her sons all the instruction they had ever received, and, being a woman of attainments beyond those usual in her station, she seemed quite competent to the task.  Nothing more was heard of their quarrels; they were always coldly civil to each other, when in the presence of others, and were regarded by their companions with respect, though, I imagine, never with any cordial