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Title: The Entailed Hat; Or, Patty Cannon's Times

Author: George Alfred Townsend

Release date: August 30, 2006 [eBook #19146]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19146

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ENTAILED
HAT; OR, PATTY CANNON'S TIMES ***

THE ENTAILED HAT
OR

PATTY CANNON'S TIMES
A Romance

By GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND

"GATH"

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE
1884
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

All rights reserved.

TO

JUDGE GEORGE P. FISHER
OF DELAWARE

AND

HON. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL
OF MARYLAND

LOVERS OF OLD TIMES

WELCOMERS OF THE NEW ERA

"Friends! trust not the heart of that man for whom Old Clothes are not
venerable."—Carlyle: Sartor Resartus

INTRODUCTION.
Once the author awoke to a painful reflection that he knew no place well,
though his occupation had taken him to many, and that, after twenty-five
years of describing localities and society, he would be identified with none.
"Where shall I begin to rove within confines?" he asked, feeling the vacant
spaces in his nature: the want of all those birds, forest trees, household
habits, weeds, instincts of the brooks, and tints and tones of the local
species which lie in some neighborhood's compass, and complete the
pastoral mind.
Numerous districts rose up and contended together, each attractive from
some striking scene, or bold contrast, or lovely face; and wiser policy might
have led his inclinations to one of these, redundant, perhaps, in wealth or
literary appreciation; yet the heart began to turn, as in first love, or vagrancy
almost as sweet, to the little, lowly region where his short childhood was
lived, and where the unknown generations of his people darkened the sand
—the peninsula between the Chesapeake and the Delaware.
Far down this peninsula lies the old town of Snow Hill, on the border of
Virginia; there the pilgrim entered the court-house, and asked to see an
early book of wills, and in it he turned to the name of a maternal ancestor,
of whom grand tales had been told him by an aged relative. His breath was
almost taken by finding the following provisions, dated February 12, 1800:
"I give and bequeath to my son, Ralph Milbourn, MY BEST HAT, TO HIM
AND HIS ASSIGNEES FOREVER, and no more of my estate.
"I give to Thomas Milbourn my small iron kettle, my brandy still, all my
hand-irons, my pot-rack, and fifteen pounds bond that he gave to my
daughter, Grace Milbourn."
The next day a doctor took the author on his rounds through "the Forest," as
a neighboring tract was almost too invidiously called, and through a
deserted iron-furnace; village almost of the date of these wills.

Everywhere he went the Entailed Hat seemed, to the stranger in the land of
his forefathers, to appear in the vistas, as if some odd, reverend, avoided
being was wearing it down the defiles of time. Now like Hester Prynne
wearing her Scarlet Letter, and now like Gaston in his Iron Mask, this being
took both sexes and different characters, as the author weighed the
probabilities of its existence. At last he began to know it, and started to
portray it in a little tale.
The story broke from its confines as his own family generation had broken
from that forest, and sought a larger hemisphere; yet, wherever the mystic
Hat proceeded, his truant fancy had also been led by his mother's hand.
Often had she told him of old Patty Cannon and her kidnapper's den, and
her death in the jail of his native town. He found the legend of that dreaded
woman had strengthened instead of having faded with time, and her haunts
preserved, and eye-witnesses of her deeds to be still living.
Hence, this romance has much local truth in it, and is not only the narration
of an episode, but the story of a large region comprehending three state
jurisdictions, and also of that period when modern life arose upon the ruins
of old colonial caste.

CONTENTS.
Introduction.
Chapter I. —Two Hat Wearers
Chapter II. —Judge and Daughter
Chapter III. —The Foresters
Chapter IV. —Discovery of the Heirloom
Chapter V. —The Bog-ore Tract
Chapter VI. —The Custises Ruined
Chapter VII. —Jack-o'-lantern Iron
Chapter VIII. —The Hat Finds a Rack
Chapter IX. —Ha! ha! the Wooing on't
Chapter X. —Master in the Kitchen
Chapter XI. —Dying Pride
Chapter XII. —Princess Anne Folks
Chapter XIII. —Shadow of the Tile
Chapter XIV. —Meshach's Home
Chapter XV. —The Kidnapper
Chapter XVI. —Bell-crown Man
Chapter XVII. —Sabbath and Canoe
Chapter XVIII. —Under an Old Bonnet
Chapter XIX. —The Dusky Levels
Chapter XX. —Caste without Tone
Chapter XXI. —Long Separations
Chapter XXII. —Nanticoke People
Chapter XXIII. —Twiford's Island
Chapter XXIV. —Old Chimneys
Chapter XXV. —Patty Cannon's
Chapter XXVI. —Van Dorn
Chapter XXVII. —Cannon's Ferry
Chapter XXVIII. —Pacification
Chapter XXIX. —Beginning of the Raid

Chapter XXX. —Africa
Chapter XXXI. —Peach Blush
Chapter XXXII. —Garter-snakes
Chapter XXXIII. —Honeymoon
Chapter XXXIV. —The Ordeal
Chapter XXXV. —Cowgill House
Chapter XXXVI. —Two Whigs
Chapter XXXVII. —Spirit of the Past
Chapter XXXVIII. —Virgie's Flight
Chapter XXXIX. —Virgie's Flight—Continued
Chapter XL. —Hulda Beleaguered
Chapter XLI. —Aunt Patty's Last Trick
Chapter XLII. —Beaks
Chapter XLIII. —Pleasure Drained
Chapter XLIV. —The Death of Patty Cannon
Chapter XLV. —The Judge Remarried
Chapter XLVI. —The Curse of the Hat
Chapter XLVII. —Failure and Restitution

A picture of Joe Johnson's Kidnapper's Tavern, as it stood in the
year 1883, is given on the title-page.

THE ENTAILED HAT.

Chapter I.
TWO HAT WEARERS.

Princess Anne, as its royal name implies, is an old seat of justice, and
gentle-minded town on the Eastern Shore. The ancient county of Somerset
having been divided many years before the revolutionary war, and its courts
separated, the original court-house faded from the world, and the forest
pines have concealed its site. Two new towns arose, and flourish yet,
around the original records gathered into their plain brick offices, and he
would be a forgetful visitor in Princess Anne who would not say it had the
better society. He would get assurances of this from "the best people" living
there; and yet more solemn assurances from the two venerable churches,
Presbyterian and Episcopalian, whose grave-stones, upright or recumbent,
or in family rows, say, in epitaphs Latinized, poetical, or pious, "We
belonged to the society of Princess Anne." That, at least, is the impression
left on the visitor as he wanders amid their myrtle and creeper, or receives,
on the wide, loamy streets, the bows of the lawyers and their clients.
There were but two eccentric men living in Princess Anne in the early half
of our century, and both of them were identified by their hats.
The first was Jack Wonnell, a poor fellow of some remote origin who had
once attended an auction, and bought a quarter gross of beaver hats.
Although that happened years before our story opens, and the fashions had
changed, Jack produced a new hat from the stock no oftener than when he
had well worn its predecessor, and, at the rate of two hats a year, was very
slowly extinguishing the store. Like most people who frequent auctions, he
was not provident, except in hats, and presented a startling appearance in
his patched and shrunken raiment when he mounted a bright, new tile, and
took to the sidewalk. His name had become, in all grades of society, "Bell-
crown."
The other eccentric citizen was the subject of a real mystery, and even more
burlesque. He wore a hat, apparently more than a century old, of a tall,

steeple crown, and stiff, wavy brim, and nearly twice as high as the
cylinders or high hats of these days. It had been rubbed and recovered and
cleaned and straightened, until its grotesque appearance was infinitely
increased. If the wearer had walked out of the court of King James I.
directly into our times and presence, he could not have produced a more
singular effect. He did not wear this hat on every occasion, nor every day,
but always on Sabbaths and holidays, on funeral or corporate celebrations,
on certain English church days, and whenever he wore the remainder of his
extra suit, which was likewise of the genteel-shabby kind, and terminated
by greenish gaiters, nearly the counterpart, in color, of the hat. To daily
business he wore a cheap, common broadbrim, but sometimes, for several
days, on freak or unknown method, he wore this steeple hat, and strangers
in the place generally got an opportunity to see it.
Meshach Milburn, or "Steeple-top," was a penurious, grasping, hardly
social man of neighborhood origin, but of a family generally unsuccessful
and undistinguished, which had been said to be dying out for so many years
that it seemed to be always a remnant, yet never quite gone. He alone of the
Milburns had lifted himself out of the forest region of Somerset, and settled
in the town, and, by silence, frugality, hard bargaining, and, finally, by
money-lending, had become a person of unknown means—himself almost
unknown. He was, ostensibly, a merchant or storekeeper, and did deal in
various kinds of things, keeping no clerk or attendant but a negro named
Samson, who knew as little about his mind and affections as the rest of the
town. Samson's business was to clean and produce the mysterious hat,
which he knew to be required every time he saw his master shave.
As soon as the lather-cup and hone were agitated, Samson, without inquiry,
went into a big green chest in the bedroom over the old wooden store, and
drew out of a leather hat-box the steeple-crown, where Meshach Milburn
himself always sacredly replaced it. Then "Samson Hat," as the boys called
him, exercised his brush vigorously, and put the queer old head-gear in as
formal shape as possible, and he silently attended to its rehabilitation
through the medium of the village hatter, never leaving the shop until the
tile had been repaired, and suffering none whatever to handle it except the
mechanic. In addition to this, Samson cooked his master's food, and
performed rough work around the store, but had no other known
qualification for a confidential servant except his bodily power.

He was now old, probably sixty, but still a most formidable pugilist; and he
had caught, running afoot, the last wild deer in the county. Though not a
drinking man Samson Hat never let a year pass without having a personal
battle with some young, willing, and powerful negro. His physical and
mental system seemed to require some such periodical indulgence, and he
measured every negro who came to town solely in the light of his prowess.
At the appearance of some Herculean or clean-chested athlete, Samson's
eye would kindle, his smile start up, and his friendly salutation would be:
"You're a good man! 'Most as good as me!" He was never whipped, rumor
said, but by an inoffensive black class-leader whom he challenged and
compelled to fight.
"Befo' God, man, I never see you befo'! I'se jined de church! I kint fight! I
never didn't do it!"
"Can't help it, brother!" answered Samson. "You're too good a man to go
froo Somerset County. Square off or you'll ketch it!"
"Den if I must I must! de Lord forgive me!" and after a tremendous battle
the class-leader came off nearly conqueror.
Whenever Samson indulged his gladiatorial propensities he disappeared
into the forest whence he came, and being a free man of mental
independence equal to his nerve, he merely waited in his lonely cabin until
Meshach Milburn sent him word to return. Then silently the old negro
resumed his place, looked contrition, took the few bitter, overbearing words
of his master silently, and brushed the ancient hat.
Meshach kept him respectably dressed, but paid him no wages; the negro
had what he wanted, but wanted little; on more than one occasion the court
had imposed penalties on Samson's breaches of the peace, and he lay in jail,
unsolicitous and proud, until Meshach Milburn paid the fine, which he did
grudgingly; for money was Meshach's sole pursuit, and he spent nothing
upon himself.
Without a vice, it appeared that Meshach Milburn had not an emotion,
hardly a virtue. He had neither pity nor curiosity, visitors nor friends,
professions nor apologies. Two or three times he had been summoned on a
jury, when he put on his best suit and his steeple-crown, and formally went

through his task. He attended the Episcopal worship every Sunday and great
holiday, wearing inevitably the ancient tile, which often of itself drew
audience more than the sermon. He gave a very small sum of money and
took a cheap pew, and read from his prayer-book many admonitions he did
not follow.
He was not litigious, but there was no evading the perfectness of his
contracts. His searching and large hazel eyes, almost proud and quite
unkindly, and his Indian-like hair, were the leading elements of a face not
large, but appearing so, as if the buried will of some long frivolous family
had been restored and concentrated in this man and had given a bilious
power to his brows and jaws and glances.
His eccentricity had no apparent harmony with anything else nor any
especial sensibility about it. The boys hooted his hat, and the little girls
often joined in, crying "Steeple-top! He's got it on! Meshach's loose!" But
he paid no attention to anybody, until once, at court time, some carousing
fellows hired Jack Wonnell to walk up to Meshach Milburn and ask to swap
a new bell-crown for the old decrepit steeple-top. Looking at Wonnell
sternly in the face, Meshach hissed, "You miserable vagrant! Nature meant
you to go bareheaded. Beware when you speak to me again!"
"I was afraid of him," said Jack Wonnell, afterwards. "He seemed to have a
loaded pistol in each eye."
No other incident, beyond indiscriminate ridicule, was recorded of this hat,
except once, when a group of little children in front of Judge Custis's house
began to whisper and titter, and one, bolder than the rest, the Judge's
daughter, gravely walked up to the unsocial man; it was the first of May,
and he was in his best suit:
"Sir," she said, "may I put a rose in your old hat?"
The harsh man looked down at the little queenly child, standing straight and
slender, with an expression on her face of composure and courtesy. Then he
looked up and over the Judge's residence to see if any mischievous or
presuming person had prompted this act. No one was in sight, and the other
children had run away.
"Why do you offer me a flower?" he said, but with no tenderness.

"Because I thought such a very old hat might improve with a rose."
He hesitated a minute. The little girl, as if well-born, received his strong
stare steadily. He took off the venerable old head-gear, and put it in the
pretty maid's hand. She fixed a white rose to it, and then he placed the hat
and rose again on his head and took a small piece of gold from his pocket.
"Will you take this?"
"My father will not let me, sir!"
Meshach Milburn replaced the coin and said nothing else, but walked down
the streets, amid more than the usual simpering, and the weather-beaten
door of the little rickety storehouse closed behind him.

Chapter II.
JUDGE AND DAUGHTER.

Judge Custis was the most important man in the county. He belonged to the
oldest colonial family of distinction, the Custises of Northampton, whose
fortune, beginning with King Charles II. and his tavern credits in
Rotterdam, ended in endowing Colonel George Washington with a widow's
mite. The Judge at Princess Anne was the most handsome man, the father of
the finest family of sons and daughters, the best in estate, most various in
knowledge, and the most convivial of Custises.
In that region of the Eastern Shore there is so little diversity of productions,
the ocean and the loam alone contributing to man, that Judge Custis had an
exaggerated reputation as a mineralogist.
He had begun to manufacture iron out of the bog ores found in the swamps
and hummocks of a neighboring district, and, with the tastes of a
landholding and slaveholding family, had erected around his furnace a
considerable town, his own residence as proprietor conspicuous in the
midst. There he spent a large part of the time, and not always in the
company of his family, entertaining friends from the distant cities, enjoying
the luxuries of terrapin, duck, and wines, and, as rumor said in the forest, all
the pleasures of a Russian or German nobleman on a secluded estate.
He could lie down on the ground with the barefooted foresters, equal and
familiar with them, and carry off their suffrages for the State Senate or the
Assembly. In Princess Anne he was more discriminating, rising in that
society to his family stature, and surrounded by alliances which demanded
what is called "bearing." In short, he was the head of the community, and
his wealth, originally considerable, had been augmented by marriage, while
his credit extended to Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Not long after the occurrence of his young daughter, Vesta, placing the rose
in Meshach Milburn's mysterious hat, Judge Custis said to his lady at the
breakfast-table:

"That man has been allowed to shut himself in, like a dog, too long. He
owes something to this community. I'll go down to his kennel, under
pretence of wanting a loan—and I do need some money for the furnace!"
He took his cane after breakfast and passed out of his large mansion, and
down the sidewalk of the level street. There were, as usually, some negroes
around Milburn's small, weather-stained store, and Samson Hat, among
them, shook hands with the Judge, not a particle disturbed at the latter's
condescension.
"Judge," said Samson, looking that large, portly gentleman over, "you'se a
good man yet. But de flesh is a little soft in yo' muscle, Judge."
"Ah! Samson," answered Custis, "there's one old fellow that is wrastling
you."
"Time?" said the negro; "we can't fight him, sho! Dat's a fack! But I'm good
as any man in Somerset now."
"Except my daughter's boy, the class-leader from Talbot."
"Is dat boy in yo' family," exclaimed Samson, kindling up. "I'll walk dar if
he'll give me another throw."
The Judge passed into the wide-open door of Meshach Milburn's store. A
few negroes and poor whites were at the counter, and Meshach was
measuring whiskey out to them by the cheap dram in exchange for
coonskins and eggs. He looked up, just a trifle surprised at the principal
man's advent, and merely said, without nodding:
"'Morning!"
Judge Custis never flinched from anybody, but his intelligence recognized
in Meshach's eyes a kind of nature he had not yet met, though he was of
universal acquaintance. It was not hostility, nor welcome, nor indifference.
It was not exactly spirit. As nearly as the Judge could formulate it, the
expression was habitual self-reliance, and if not habitual suspicion, the
feeling most near it, which comes from conscious unpopularity.
"Mr. Milburn," said Judge Custis, "when you are at leisure let me have a
few words with you."

The storekeeper turned to the poor folks in his little area and remarked to
them bluntly:
"You can come back in ten minutes."
They all went out without further command. Milburn closed the door. The
Judge moved a chair and sat down.
"Milburn," he said, dropping the formal "mister," "they tell me you lend
money, and that you charge well for it. I am a borrower sometimes, and I
believe in keeping interest at home in our own community. Will you
discount my note at legal interest?"
"Never," replied Meshach.
"Then," said the Judge, smiling, "you'll put me to some inconvenience."
"That's more than legal interest," answered Milburn, sturdily. "You'll pay
the legal interest where you go, and the inconvenience of going will cost
something too. If you add your expenses as liberally as you incur them
when you go to Baltimore, to legal interest, you are always paying a good
shave."
"Where you have risks," suggested the Judge, "there is some reason for a
heavy discount, but my property will enrich this county and all the land you
hold mortgages on."
"Bog ore!" muttered the money-lender. "I never lent money on that kind of
risk. I must read upon it! They say manufacturing requires mechanical
talent. How much do you want?"
"Three thousand."
"Secured upon the furnace?"
"Yes."
Meshach computed on a piece of paper, and the Judge, with easy curiosity,
studied his singular face and figure.
He was rather short and chunky, not weighing more than one hundred and
thirty pounds, with long, fine fingers of such tracery and separate action

that every finger seemed to have a mind and function of its own. Looking at
his hands only, one would have said: "There is here a pianist, a penman, a
woman of definite skill, or a man of peculiar delicacy." All the fingers were
well produced, as if the hand instead of the face was meant to be the mind's
exponent and reveal its portrait there.
Yet the face of Meshach Milburn, if more repellent, was uncommon.
The effects of one long diet and one climate, invariable, from generation to
generation, and both low and uninvigorating, had brought to nearly
aboriginal form and lines his cheek-bones, hair, and resinous brown eyes.
From the cheek-bones up he looked like an Indian, and expressed a stolid
power and swarthiness. Below, there dropped a large face, in proportion,
with nothing noticeable about it except the nose, which was so straight,
prominent, and complete, and its nostrils so sensitive, that only the nose
upon his face seemed to be good company for his hands. When he
confronted one, with his head thrown back a little, his brown eyes staring
inquiry, and his nose almost sentient, the effect was that of a hostile savage
just burst from the woods.
That was his condition indeed.
"Look at him in the eyes," said the town-bred, "he's all forester!"
"But look at his hand," added some few observant ones.
Ah! who had ever shaken that hand?
It was now extended to the Judge and he took from its womanly fingers the
terms of the loan. Judge Custis was surprised at the moderation of Meshach,
and he looked up cheerfully into that ever sentinel face on which might
have been printed "qui vive?"
"It's not the goodness of the security," said Meshach, "I make it low to you,
socially!"
The Custis pride started with a flush to the Judge's eyes, to have this
ostracised and hooted Shylock intimate that their relations could be more
than a prince's to a pawnbroker. But the Judge was a politician, with an
adaptable mind and address.

"Speaking of social things, Milburn," he said, carelessly, "our town is not so
large that we don't all see each other sometimes. Why do you wear that
forlorn, unsightly hat?"
"Why do you wear the name Custis?"
"Oh, I inherited that!"
"And I inherited my hat."
There was a pause for a minute, but before the Judge could tell whether it
was an angry or an awkward pause, the storekeeper said:
"Judge Custis, I concede that you are the best bred man in Princess Anne.
Where did you get authority to question another person about any decent
article of his attire?"
"I stand corrected, Milburn," said the Judge. "Good feeling for you more
than curiosity made me suggest it. And I may also remark to you, sir, that
when you lend me money you will always do it commercially and not
socially."
"Very well," remarked Meshach Milburn, "and if I ever enter your door, I
will then take off my hat."

The next morning Meshach Milburn surprised Samson Hat by saying: "Boy,
when you have another fight and make yourself a barbarian again,
remember to bring back, from Nassawongo furnace, about a peck of the bog
ores!"

The years moved on without much change in Princess Anne. The little
Manokin river brought up oysters from the bay, and carried off the corn and
produce. The great brick academy at neighboring "Lower Trappe" boarded
and educated the brightest youths of the best families on the Peninsula; and

these perceived, as the annual summers brought their fulness, what portion
of their beauty remained with Vesta Custis. She was like Helen of Troy, a
subject of homage and dispute in childhood, and became a woman, in men's
consideration, almost imperceptibly. Sent to Baltimore to be educated, her
return was followed by suitors—not youthful admirers only, but mature
ones—and the young men of the Peninsula remarked with chagrin: "None
of us have a chance! Some great city nabob will get her."
But the academy boys and visitors, and the townspeople, had one common
opportunity to see her and to hear her—when she sang, every Sabbath and
church day, in the Episcopal church.
Her voice was the natural expression of her beauty—sweet, powerful, free,
and easily trained. A divine bird seemed hidden in the old church when this
noble yet tender voice broke forth; but they who turned to see the singer
who had made such Paradise, looked almost on Eve herself.
She was rather slight, tall, and growing fuller slowly every year, like one in
whom growth was early, yet long, and who would wholly mature not until
near middle life. Her head, however, was perfection, even in girlhood, not
less by its proportions than its carriage: her graceful figure bore it like the
slender setting, holding up the first splendor of the peach; a head of vital
and spiritual beauty, where purity and luxuriance, woman and mind, dwelt
in harmony and joy. As she seemed ever to be ripening, so she seemed
never to have been a child, but, with faculties and sense clear and
unintimidated, she was never wanting in modesty, nor accused of want of
self-possession. Judge Custis made her his reliance and pride; she never
reproved his errors, nor treated them familiarly, but settled the household by
a consent which all paid to her character alone. More than once she had
appeared at the furnace mansion when the Judge's long absence had
awakened some jealousy or distrust:
"Father, please go home with me! I want you to drive me back."
The easy, self-indulgent Judge would look a slight protest, but at the soft,
spirited command; "Come, sir! you can't stay here any more," dismissed his
companions, and took his place at the head of Princess Anne society.

Vesta was almost a brunette, with the rich colors of her type—eyebrows like
the raven's wing, ripe, red lips, and hair whose darkness and length,
released from the crown into which she wound it, might have spun her
garments. Her eyes were of a steel-blue, in which the lights had the effect of
black. She was dark with sky breaking through, like the rich dusk and
twilights over the Chesapeake.
People wondered that, with such beauty, ease, and accomplishments she
was not proud; but her pride was too ethereal to be seen. It was not the vain
consciousness of gifts and endowments, but the serene sense of worthiness,
of unimpaired health, honor, and descent, which made her kind and
thoughtful to a degree only less than piety. Grateful for her social rank and
parentage, she adorned but did not forget them. The suitors who came for
her were weighed in this scale of perfect desert—to be sons of such parents
and associates of her married sisters and sisters-in-law. Not one had
survived the test, yet none knew where he failed.
"Vesta is too good for any of them," exclaimed the Judge, on more than one
occasion. "When I get the furnace in such shape that it will run itself I will
take my daughter to Europe and give her a musical education."
In truth, the Judge had expectations of his daughter; for the reputation he
had attained as a manufacturer was not without its drawbacks. He
maintained two establishments; he supported a large body of laborers and
dependents, some of whom he had brought from distant places under
contract; the experiment in which he had embarked was still an experiment,
and he was subject to the knowledge and judgment of his manager, being
himself rather the patron than the manufacturer at the works. Many days,
when he was supposed to be testing the percentage and mixture of his ores,
he was gunning off on the ocean bars, crabbing on Whollop's Beach, or
hunting up questionable company among the forest girls, or around the
oystermen's or wrecker's cabins. He had plenty of property and family
endorsers, however, and seldom failed to have a satisfactory interview with
Meshach Milburn, who was now assisting him, at least once a quarter, to
keep both principal and interest at home.
The Judge had grown thicker with Meshach, but the storekeeper merely
listened and assented, and took no pains to incur another criticism on his

motives. Meshach wore his great hat, as ever, to church and on festive days,
and it was still derided, and held to be the town wonder. Vesta Custis often
saw the odd little man come into church while she was singing, and she
fancied that his large, coarse ears were turned to receive the music she was
making, and she faintly remembered that once she had held in her hands
that wonderful hat with its copper buckle in the band, and stiff, wide brim,
flowing in a wave. More than that she knew nothing, except that the wearer
was an humble-born, grasping creature—a forester without social
propensities, or, indeed, any human attachments. The negro who abode
under his roof was beloved, compared to the sordid master, and all
testimony concurred that Meshach Milburn deserved neither
commiseration, friendship, nor recognition. Her father, however, indulgent
in all things, said the money-lender had a good mind, and was no serf.
Milburn had ceased to deal with negroes or dispense drams. His wealth was
now known to be more than considerable. He had ceased, also, to lend
money on the surrounding farms, and rumors came across the bay that he
was a holder of stocks and mortgages on the Western Shore, and in
Baltimore and Pennsylvania. The little town of Princess Anne was full of
speculations about him, and even his age was uncertain; Jack Wonnell had
measured it by hats. Said Jack:
"I bought my bell-crowns the year ole Milburn's daddy and mammy died.
They died of the bilious out yer in Nassawongo, within a few days of each
other. Now, I wear two bell-crowns a year. I come out every Fourth of July
and Christmas. 'Tother day I counted what was left, and I reckoned that
Meshach couldn't be forty-five at the wust."
Vesta Custis was only twenty years old when the townsfolk thought she
must be twenty-five, so long had she been the beauty of Somerset. Her
mother had always looked with apprehension on the possible time when her
daughter would marry and leave her; for Judge Custis had long ceased to
have the full confidence of his lady, whose fortune he had embarked
without return on ventures still in doubt, and he always waived the subject
when it was broached, or remarked that no loss was possible in his hands
while Mrs. Custis lived.

Chapter III.
THE FORESTERS.

One Saturday afternoon in October Meshach Milburn drew out his razor,
cup, and hone, and prepared to shave, albeit his beard was never more than
harmless down. By a sort of capillary attraction Samson Hat divined his
purpose, and, opening the big green chest, brought out the mysterious hat.
"Put it down!" commanded the money-lender. "Go out and hire me a
carriage with two horses—two horses, do you mind!"
Samson dropped the hat in wonderment.
"Make yourself decent," added Meshach; "I want you to drive. Go with me,
and keep with me: do you understand?"
"Yes, marster."
When the negro departed, Meshach himself took up the tall, green, buckled
hat, with the stiff, broad, piratical brim. He looked it over long and hard.
"Vanity, vanity!" he murmured, "vanity and habit! I dare not disown thee
now, because they give thee ridicule, and without thee they would give me
nothing but hate!"
The people around the tavern and court-house saw, with surprise too great
for jeering, the note-shaver go past in a carriage, driven by his negro, and
with two horses! Jack Wonnell took off his shining beaver to cheer. As the
phenomenal team receded, the old cry ran, however, down the stilly street:
"Steeple-top! He's got it on! Meshach's loose!"
The carriage proceeded out the forest road, and soon entered upon the
sandy, pine-slashed region called Hard-scrabble, or Hardship.
Here the roads were sandy as the hummocks and hills in the rear of a sea
beach, and the low, lean pines covered the swells and ridges, while in

occasional level basins, where the stiff clay was exposed, some forester's
unpainted hut sat black and smoking on the slope, without a window-pane,
an ornament, or anything to relieve life from its monotony and isolation.
But where the rills ran off to the continuous swamps the leafage started up
in splendrous versatility. The maple stood revealed in all its fair, light
harmonies. The magnolia drooped its ivory tassels, and scented the forest
with perfume. The kalmia and the alder gave undergrowth and brilliancy to
the foliage. Hoary and green with precipitate old age, the cypress-trees
stood in moisture, and drooped their venerable beards from angular
branches, the bald cypress overhanging its evergreen kinsman, and looking
down upon the swamp-woods in autumn, like some hermit artist on the rich
pigments on his palette.
But nothing looked so noble as the sweet gum, which rose like a giant
plume of yellow and orange, a chief in joyous finery, where the cypress was
only a faded philosopher.
Beside such a tall gum-tree Samson Hat reined in, where a well-spring
shone at the bottom of a hollow cypress. He borrowed a bucket from the hut
across the road, and watered the horses.
"Marster," ventured the negro, "dey say your gran'daddy sot dis spring."
"Yes," said Milburn, "and built the cabin. Yonder he lies, on the knoll by
that stump, up in the field: he and more of our wasted race."
"And yon woman is a Milburn," added the negro, socially. "I know her by
de hands."
The barefoot woman living in the cabin—one room and a loft, and the floor
but a few inches above the ground—cried out, impudently:
"If I could have two horses I'd buy a better hat!"
Milburn did not answer, but marked the poor, small corn ears ungathered on
the fodderless stalks, the shrubs of peach-trees, of which the largest grew on
his ancestors' graves, the little cart for one horse or ox, which was at once
family carriage and farm wagon, and the few pigs and chickens of stunted
breeds around the woman's feet.

"Drive on, boy," he exclaimed; "the worst of all is that these people are
happy!"
"Dat's a fack, marster," laughed Samson Hat. "Dey wouldn't speak to you in
Princess Anne. Dey think everybody's proud and rich dar."
"Here the sea once dashed its billows on a bar," said Meshach Milburn,
reflectively. "That geology book relates it! From the North the hummocks
recede in waves, where successive beaches were formed as the sea slowly
retreated. Hardly deeper than a human grave they strike water, below the
sand and gravel. Below the water they drink is nothing but black mud, made
of coarse, decayed grass. No lime is in the soil. Not a mineral exists in all
this low, wave-made peninsula, where my people were shipwrecked—
except the wonderful bog ores."
The negro's genial, wondering nature broke out with comfortable assurance.
"Dat must be in de Bible," he said. "Marster, de Milburns been heah so
long, dey must hab got shipwrecked wid ole Noah!"
"All families are shipwrecked," absently replied Meshach, "who cast their
lot upon an unrewarding land, and growing poorer, darker, down, from
generation to generation, can never leave it, and, at last, can never desire to
go."
"Marster, dar is one got to go some ob dese days. It's me—pore ole
Samson!"
"Ha! has some one set you on to demand your wages?"
"No, marster, I am old. It's you dat I'm troubled about! Dar's none to mend
for you, cook for you, cure yo' sickness, or lay you in de grave."
No more was said until they passed the settled part of the forest and entered
one of the many straight aisles of sky and sand among the pines, which had
been opened on the great furnace tract of Judge Custis. He had here several
thousand acres, and for miles the roadways were cleft towards the horizon.
The moon rose behind them as they entered the furnace village, and they
saw the lights twinkle through the open doors of many cottages and the
furnace flames dart over the forbidding mill-pond, where in the depths grew

the iron ore, like a vegetable creation, and above the surface, on splayed
and conical mud-washed roots, the hundreds of strong cypresses towered
from the water. Between the steep banks of dark-colored pines, taller than
the forest growth, this furnace lake lay black and white and burning red as
the shadows, or moonrise, or flames struck upon it, and the stained water
foamed through the breast or dam where the ancient road crossed between
pines, cypresses and gum-trees of commanding stature.
Tawny, slimy, chilly, and solemn, the pond repeated the forms of the groves
it submerged; the shaggy shadows added depth and dread to the effect;
some strange birds hooted as they dipped their wings in the surface, and,
flying upward, seemed also sinking down. As Meshach felt the chill of that
pond he drew down his hat and buttoned up his coat.
"The earliest fools who turned up the bog ores for wealth," he said,
"released the miasmas which slew all the people roundabout. They killed all
my family, but set me free."

Chapter IV.
DISCOVERY OF THE HEIRLOOM.

Judge Custis was in his bedroom, in the second story of the large, inn-like
mansion at the middle of the village, and he was just recovering from the
effects of a long wassail. In his peculiar nervous condition he started at the
sound of wheels, and, drawing his curtains, looked out upon the long
shadow of an advancing figure crowned with a steeple hat.
This human shadow strengthened and faded in the alternating light, until it
was defined against his storehouse, his warehouse, his cabins, and the plain,
and it seemed also against the wall of dense forest pines. Then footsteps
ascended the stairs. His door opened and Meshach Milburn, with his
holiday hat on his head, stood on the threshold; his eyes vigilant and bold as
ever, and all his Indian nature to the front.
"My God, Milburn!" exclaimed the Judge, "odd as it is to see you here, I am
relieved. Old Nick, I thought, was coming."
"Shall I come in?" asked Milburn.
"Yes; I'm sleeping off a little care and business. Let your man stay outside
on the porch. Draw up a chair. It's money, I suppose, that brings you here?"
The money-lender carefully put his formidable hat upon a table, took a
distant chair, pushed his gaitered feet out in front, and laid a large wallet or
pocket-book on his lap. Then, addressing his whole attention to the host, he
appeared never to wink while he remained.
"Judge Custis," he said, straightforwardly, "the first time you came to
borrow money from me, you said that Nassawongo furnace would enrich
this county and raise the value of my land."
"Yes, Milburn. It was a slow enterprise, but it's coming all right. I shipped a
thousand tons last year."

"Judge Custis," continued the money-lender, "I told you, when you made
the first loan, that I would investigate this ore. I did so years ago.
Specimens were sent by me to Baltimore and tested there. Not content with
that, I have studied the manufacture of iron for myself—the society of
Princess Anne not grudging me plenty of solitude!—and I know that every
ton of iron you make costs more than you get for it. The bog ore is easy to
smelt; but it is corrupted by phosphate of iron and is barely marketable."
The Judge was sitting with eyes wide open, and paler than before.
"You have found that out?" he whispered. "I did not know it myself until
within this year—so help me God!"
"I knew it before I made you the second loan."
"Why did you not tell me?"
"Because you forbade our relations to be anything but commercial. I was
not bound to betray my knowledge."
"Why did you, then, from a commercial view, lend me large sums of money
again and again?"
"Because," said the money-lender, coolly, "you had other security. You have
a daughter!"
Judge Custis broke from the bed-covers and rushed upon Meshach Milburn.
"Heathen and devil!" he shouted, taking the money-lender by the throat, "do
you dare to mention her as part of your mortgage?"
They struggled together until a powerful pair of hands pinioned the Judge,
and bore him back to his bed. Samson Hat was the man.
"Judge!" he exclaimed, gentle, but firm, "you is a good man, but not as
good as me. Cool off, Judge!"
"I expected this scene," said Meshach Milburn. "It could not have been
avoided. I was bound in conscience and in common-sense to make you the
only proposition which could save you from ruin. For, Judge Custis, you are
a ruined man!"

Overcome with excitement and suspended stimulation, the old Judge fell
back on his pillow and began to sob.
"Give him brandy," said Meshach Milburn, "here is the bottle! He needs it
now."
The wretched gentleman eagerly drank the proffered draught from the
negro's hands. His fury did not revive, and he covered his face with his
palms and moaned piteously.
"Judge Custis," remarked Meshach Milburn, "if the apparent social distance
between us could be lessened by any argument, I might make one. For the
difference is in appearance only. The healthy flesh which gives you and
yours stature and beauty is a matter of food alone. My stock has survived
five generations of such diet as has bent the spines of the forest pigs and
stunted the oxen. Money and family joy will give me children comely
again. My life has been hard but pure."
The old Judge felt the last unconscious reflection.
"Yes," he uttered, solemnly, "no doubt Heaven marked me for some such
degradation as this, when I yielded to low propensities, and sought my
pleasure and companions in the huts of the forest!"
"You claim descent from the Stuart Restoration: I know the tale. A creditor
of the two exiled royal brothers for sundry tavern loans and tipples drew for
his obligation an office in far-off Virginia. Seizures, confiscations, the
slave-trade, marriages—in short, the long game of advantage—built up the
fortunes of the Custises, until they expired in a certain Judge, whose notes
of hand a hard man, forest-born, held over the Judge's head on what seemed
hard conditions, but conditions in which was every quality of mercy, except
consideration for your pride."
The Judge made a laugh like a howl.
"Mercy?" he exclaimed, "you do not know what it is! To ensnare my
innocent daughter in the damned meshes of your principal and interest! Call
it malignity—the visitation of your unsocial wrath on man and an angel; but
not mercy!"

"Then we will call it compensation," continued Meshach Milburn: "for
twenty years I have denied myself everything; you denied yourself nothing.
Your substance is wasted; renew it from the abundance of my thrift. It was
not with an evil design that I made myself your creditor, although, as the
years have rolled onward and solitude chilled my heart, that has always
pined for human friendship, I could not but see the kindling glory of your
daughter's beauty. Like the schoolboys, the married husbands—yes, like the
slaves—I had to admire her. Then, unknowing how deeply you were
involved, I found offered to me for sale the paper you had negotiated in
Baltimore—paper, Judge Custis, dishonorably negotiated!"
The money-lender rose and walked to the sad man's bed, and held the hand,
full of these notes, boldly over him.
"It was despair, Milburn!" moaned the Judge.
"And so was my resolution. Said I: 'This lofty gentleman would cheat me,
his neighbor, who have suffered all the contumely of this good society, and
on starveling opportunity have slowly recovered independence. Now he
shall take my place in the forest, or I will wear my hat at the head of his
family table.'"
"A dreadful revenge!" whispered Custis, with a shudder. "Such a hat is
worse than a cloven foot. In God's name! whence came that ominous hat?"
Milburn took up the hat and held it before the lamplight, so that its shadow
stood gigantic against the wall.
"Who would think," he said, sarcastically, "that a mere head-covering,
elegant in its day, could make more hostility than an idle head? I will tell
you the silly secret of it. When I came from the obscurity of the forest,
sensitive, and anxious to make my way, and slowly gathered capital and
knowledge, a person in New York directed a letter of inquiry to me. It told
how a certain Milburn, a Puritan or English Commonwealth man, had risen
to great distinction in that province, and had revolutionized its government
and suffered the penalty of high-treason."
"True enough," said Judge Custis, pouring a second glass of brandy;
"Milburn and Leisler were executed in New York during the lifetime of the

first Custis. They anticipated the expulsion of James II., and were entrapped
by their provincial enemies and made political martyrs."
"The inquirer," said Meshach, "who had obtained my address in the course
of business, related, that after Milburn's death his brethren and their families
had sailed to the Chesapeake, where the Protestants had successfully
revolutionized for King William, and, making choice of poor lands, they
had become obscure. He asked me if the court-house records made any
registry of their wills."
"Of course you found them?"
"Yes. It was a revelation to me, and gave me the honorable sense of some
origin and quality. I traced myself back to the earliest folios, at the close of
the seventeenth century."
"Any property, Milburn?" asked the Judge, voluptuous and reanimated
again.
"My great-grandfather had left his son nothing but a Hat."
"Not uncommon!" exclaimed Judge Custis. "Our early wills contain little
but legacies of wearing apparel, household articles, bedding, pots and
kettles, and the elements of civilization."
"The will on record said: 'I give to my eldest son, Meshach Milburn, my best
Hat, and no more of my estate.'"
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the Judge, loudly. "Genteel to the last! A hat of
fashion, no doubt, made in London; quite too ceremonious and topgallant
for these colonies. He left it to his eldest son, en-tiledit, we may say. Ho!
ho!"
"When my indignation was over, I took the same view you do, Judge
Custis, that it was a bequest of dignity, not of burlesque; and I made some
inquiries for that best Hat. It was a legend among my forest kin, had been
seen by very old people, was celebrated in its day, and worn by my
grandfather thankfully. He left it to my father, still a hat of reputation—"
"Still en-tiled to the oldest son! Ha, ha! Milburn."

"My father sold the hat to Charles Wilson Peale, who was native to our
peninsula, and knew the ancient things existing here that would help him to
form Peale's Museum during the last century. I found the hat in that
museum, covering the mock-figure of Guy Fawkes!"
"Conspirator's hat; bravo!" exclaimed the Judge.
"It had been used for the heads of George Calvert and Shakespeare, but in
time of religious excitements was proclaimed to be the true hat of Guy
Fawkes. I reclaimed it, and brought it to Princess Anne, and in a vain
moment put it on my head and walked into the street. It was assailed with
halloos and ribaldry."
"It was another Shirt of Nessus, Milburn; it poisoned your life, eh?"
"Perhaps so," replied Milburn, with intensity. "They say what is one man's
drink is another man's poison. You will accept that hat on the head of your
son-in-law, or no more drink out of the Custis property!"

Chapter V.
THE BOG-ORE TRACT.

Resolution of character and executive power had been trifled away by
Judge Custis. The trader had concluded their interview with a decision and
fierceness that left paralysis upon the gentleman's mind. He saw, in sad
fancy, the execution served upon his furniture, the amazement of his wife,
the pallor of his daughter, the indignation of his sons. He also shrank before
the impending failure of his furnace and abandonment of the bog-ore tract,
on which he had raised so much state and local fame; people would say:
"Custis was a fool, and deceived himself, while old Steeple-top Milburn
played upon the Custises' vanity, and turned them into the street."
"No doubt," thought the Judge, "that fellow, Milburn, can get anything
when he gets my house. The poor folks' vote he may command, because he
is of their class. He is a lender to many of the rich. Who could have
suspected his intelligence? His address, too? He handled me as if I were a
forester and he a judge. A very, very remarkable man!" finished Judge
Custis, taking the last of the brandy.
He was interrupted by the entrance of Samson Hat.
"Where's your master, boy?" asked the Judge.
"He's gone up to de ole house, Judge, where his daddy and mammy died.
It's de place where I hides after my fights."
"May the ague strike him there! Let the bilious sweat from the mill-pond be
strong to-night, that, like Judas of old, his bowels may drop out! But, no,"
continued the irresolute man, "I have no right to hate him."
"Judge," softly said the old negro, "my marster is a sick man. He ain't happy
like you an' me. He's 'bitious. He's lonely. Dat's enough to spile angels. But
a gooder man I never knowed, 'cept in de onpious sperrit. He's proud as

Lucifer. He's full of hate at Princess Anne and all de people. Your darter
may git a better man, not a pyorer one."
"Purity goes a very little way," exclaimed the Judge, "on the male side of
marriage contracts. It's always assumed, and never expected. You need not
remember, Samson, that I expressed any anger at your master!"
"My whole heart, judge, is to see him happy. Hard as he is, dat man has
power to make him loved. Your darter might go farder and fare wuss! I wish
her no harm, God knows!"
The negro said an humble good-night, and the Judge lay down upon his bed
to think of the dread alternatives of the coming week; but, voluptuous even
in despair, he slept before he had come to any conclusion.
Samson Hat walked up the side of the mill-pond on a sandy road, divided
from the water by a dense growth of pines. The bullfrogs and insects
serenaded the forest; the furnace chimney smoked lurid on the midnight. At
the distance of half a mile or more an old cabin, in decay, stood in a sandy
field near the road; it had no door in the hollow doorway, no sash in the one
gaping window; the step was broken leading to the sill, and some of the
weather-boarding had rotted from the skeleton. The old end-chimney bore it
toughly up, however, and the low brick props under the corners stood
plumb. Within lay a single room with open beams, a sort of cupboard
stairway projecting over the fireplace, and another door and window were
in the rear. Before this fireplace sat Meshach Milburn on an old chair, fairly
revealed by the light of some of the burning weather-boarding he had
thrown upon the hearth. On the hearth was a little heap of the bog iron ore
and a bottle.
"Come in, Samson!" he called. "Don't think me turned drunkard because I
am taking this whiskey. I drink it to keep out the malaria, and partly as a
communion cup; for to-night the barefooted ghosts who have drooped and
withered here are with me in spirit."
"Dey was all good Milburns who lived heah, marster," said the negro. "Dey
had hard times, but did no sin. Dey shook wid chills and fevers, not wid
conscience."

"I shall shake with neither," said the money-lender. "Go up into the loft, and
sleep till you are called. I want the horses early for Princess Anne!"
The negro obeyed without remark, and disappeared behind the cupboard-
like door. Milburn sat before the fire, and looked into it long, while a
procession of thoughts and phantoms passed before it.
He saw a poor family of independent Puritans setting sail at different dates
from English seaports. Some were indentured servants, hoping for a career;
others were avoiding the civil wars; others were small political malefactors,
noisy against the oppressions of their hero, Cromwell, and conspirators
against his power; and, thrown by him in English jails, were only delivered
to be sold into slavery, driven through the streets of market-towns, placed
on troop ships between the decks, among the horses, and set up at auction in
Barbadoes, like the blacks; whence they in time continued onward
westward. One, the fortunate possessor of some competence, sailed his own
ship across the Atlantic, and delivered up to Massachusetts her governor
and gentry. Another, incapable of being suppressed, though a servant, seized
the destinies of an aristocratic colony, and held them for a while, until
accumulating enemies bore him down, and wedlock and the gibbet followed
close together. Poverty would not relinquish its gripe upon the race; they
struggled up like clods upon the ploughshare, and fell back again into the
furrow.
As Meshach Milburn thought of these things he took up a portion of the bog
ore from the hearth.
"Here is iron," he said, thoughtfully, "true iron, which makes the blood red,
moulds into infinite forms, nails houses together, binds wheels, and casts
into cannon and ball. But this iron ran into a bog, formed low combinations,
and had no other mould than twigs and leaves afforded. Its volcanic origin
was forgotten when it ran with sand and gravel away from the mountain
vein and upland ore along the low, alluvial bar, till, like an oyster, the iron is
dredged from the stagnant pool, impure, inefficacious, corrupted. So is it
with man, whose magnetic spirit follows the dull declivity to the barren
sandbars of the world, and lodges there. I am of the bog ores; but that exists
which will flux with me, clean me of rust, and transmit my better quality to

posterity. O, youth, beauty, and station—lovely Vesta! for thee I will be
iron!"
Milburn looked around the single room inquiringly. He placed his finger
upon the crevices in the weather-boarding; he opened the little closet below
the stairs, and a weasel dashed out and shot through the door; he ascended
the steep, short stairs, and with a torch examined the black shingles, but
nothing was there except a litter of young owls, whose parents had gone
poaching. Then, returning, he searched on every open beam and rotting
board, as if for writing.
"They could not write!" he thought. "Nothing is left to me, not even a sign,
down a century and a half, to tell that I had parents!"
As he spoke he felt an object move behind him, and, looking back, the
shadow of the Entailed Hat was dancing on the wall. As he threw his head
back, so did it; as he retired from it, the hat enlarged, until the little room
could hardly hold its shadow. Retiring again, he lifted it from his head with
bitter courtesy, and the shadow did the same. The man and the shadow
looked each at a peaked hat and stroked it.
"This is everything," exclaimed Milburn. "The hundred humble heads are at
rest in the sand; one grave-stone would mock them all. But once the family
brain expanded to a hat, and that survived the race. I am the Quaker who
respects his hat, the Cardinal who is crowned with it; yes, and the dunce
who must wear it in his corner!"
Then the picture of his parents arose upon his sight: a cheerful father, with
two or three old slaves, ploughing in the deep sand, to drop some shrivelled
grains of corn, or tinkering a disordered mill-wheel that moved a
blacksmith's saw. Ever full of confidence in nothing which could increase,
credulous and sanguine, tender and laborious, Milburn's sire nursed his
forest patches as if they were presently to be rich plantations, and was ever
"pricing" negroes, mules, tools, and implements, in expectation of buying
them. Nothing could diminish his confidence but disease and old age. He
heard of the great "improvement" on the Furnace tract, and took his
obedient wife and brood there. As the laborers pulled out the tussocks and
roots, encrusted with iron, from the swamp and creek, fever and ague came
forth and smote them both.

How wretched that scene when, almost too haggard to move, father and
mother, in this one bare room where Meshach sat, groaning amid their
many offspring, saw death with weakness creep upon each other—death
without priest or doctor, without residue or cleanliness—the death the
million die in lowly huts, yet, oh, how hard!
"Haste, sonny, good boy," the frightened father had said, knowing not how
ill he was, in his dependence on his wife; "take the horse, and ride into
Snow Hill for the doctor. Poor mother is dreadful sick!"
Then, leaping upon the lean old horse, bare-backed and with a rope bridle,
Meshach had pushed through the deep sand, bareheaded and barefooted,
and almost crazy with excitement, until he entered the shining streets of the
sandhilled town, and sensitively rushed into the doctor's office, crying,
"Daddy and mammy is sick, at the Furnace!" and told his name, and
wheeled, and fled.
But, as the boy rode home, more slowly, past the river full of splutter-docks,
the yellow masts of vessels rising above the woods, the flat fields of corn
everywhere bounded by forest, and the small white houses of the better
farmers, and at last entered the murmurous, complaining woods, he saw but
one thing—his mother.
Was she to disappear from the lonely clearing, and leave only the hut and its
orphans? she, who kept heaven here below, and was the saints, the arts, the
all-sufficient for her child? With her there could be no poverty; without her
riches would be only more sand. With a little molasses she made Christmas
kingly with a cake. She could name a little chicken "Meshach," and every
egg it laid was a new toy. A mocking-bird caught in the swamp became one
of the family by her kindness; would it ever sing again? The religion they
knew was all of her. The poor slaves saw no difference in mistresses while
she was theirs. In sickness she was in her sphere—health itself had come.
And once, the tenderest thing in life, when his father and she had
quarrelled, and the light of love being out made the darkness of poverty for
the only time visible, Meshach saw her weeping, and he could not comfort
her.
Then, blinded by tears, he lashed his nag along, and entered the low door.
She was dead!

"Sonny, mammy's gone!" the wretched father groaned; the little children,
huddling about the form, lifted their wail; the mocking-bird could find no
note for this, and was hushed.
Milburn arose; the fire was low. He walked to the door, and there was a sign
of day; the all-surrounding woods of pine were still dark, but on the sandy
road and hummock-field some light was shining, like hopefulness against
hope; the farm was ploughed no more; the ungrateful centuries were left
behind and abandoned, like old wilderness battle-fields, so sterile that their
great events remain ever unvisited.
"Ho! Samson, boy! It is time!"
"Yes, marster!" answered the negro in the loft.
As the negro gathered himself up and passed down the stairs, he saw
Meshach Milburn before the fire, stirring the coals. Passing out, Samson
stood a moment at the gate, and lounged up the road, not to lose his master.
As he stood there, flames burst out of the old hut and glistened on the
evergreen forest, lighting the tops of the mossy cypresses in the mill-pond,
and revealing the forms of the sandy fields. Before he could start back
Samson saw his master's figure go round and round the house, lighting the
weather-boarding from place to place with a torch; and then the low figure,
capped with the long hat, came up the road as if at mighty strides, so
lengthened by the fire.
"No need of alarm, boy!" exclaimed the filial incendiary. "Henceforth my
only ancestral hall is here!"
He held the ancient tile up in the light of the blaze.
"Ah, marster!" said the negro, "yo' hat will never give comfort like a home,
fine as de hat may be, mean as de roof! De hat will never hold two heads,
and dat makes happiness."
"The hat, at least," answered Milburn, bitterly, "will cover me where I go.
Such rotted roofs as that was make captives of bright souls."
They looked on the fire in silence a few minutes.

"You have burnt me out, boss," said old Samson, finally. "I ain't got no
place to go an' hide when I fights, now. It makes me feel solemn."
"Peace!" replied Meshach Milburn. "Now for the horses and Princess
Anne!"

Chapter VI.
THE CUSTISES RUINED.

Vesta Custis, dressing in her chamber, heard early wheels upon the morning
air, and looking through the blinds saw a double team coming up the road
from Hardship.
"Mother," she said, "is that father coming, yonder? No, it is not his driver."
"Why, Vesta!" exclaimed Mrs. Custis, "that is old Milburn's man."
"Samson Hat? so it is. What is he doing with two horses?"
Here Vesta laughed aloud, and began to skip about in her long, slender,
worked slippers, whose insteps would spare a mouse darting under.
"Mamma, it is Milburn himself, in a hack and span. See there; the steeple-
top hat, copper buckle and all! Isn't he too funny for anything! But, dear
me! he is staring right up at this window. Let us duck!"
Vesta's long, ivory-grained arms, divided from her beautiful shoulders only
by a spray of lace, pulled her mother down.
"Don't be afraid, dear! he can see nothing but the blinds. Perhaps he is
looking for the Judge."
Vesta rose again in her white morning-gown, like a stag rising from a snow-
drift. A long, trembling movement, the result of tittering, passed down the
graceful column of her back.
"He sits there like an Indian riding past in a show, mamma! Did you ever
see such a hat?"
"I think it must be buggy by this time," said the mother; and both of them
shook with laughter again. "Unless," added Mrs. Custis, "the bugs are
starved out."

"Poor, lonely creature," said Vesta, "he can only wear such a hat from want
of understanding."
"His understanding is good enough, dear. He has the green gaiters on."
They laughed again, and Vesta's hair, shaken down by her merriment, fell
nearly to her slipper, like the skin of some coal-black beast, that had sprung
down a poplar's trunk.
"Ah! well," exclaimed Vesta, as her maid entered and proceeded to wind up
this satin cordage on her crown, "what men are in their minds, can woman
know? Old ladies, not unfrequently, wear their old coal-scuttle bonnets long
past the fashion, but it is from want. This man is his own master and not
poor. His companion is a negro, and his taste a mouldy hat, old as America.
How happy are we that it is not necessary to pry into such minds! A little
refinement is the next blessing to religion."
"Your father's mind is a puzzle, too, Vesta. He has everything which these
foresters lack,—education, society, standing, and comforts. But he returns
to the forest, like an opossum, the moment your eye is off him. He can't be
traced up like this man, by his hat. I think it's a shame on you, particularly.
If he don't come home this day, I shall send for my brother and force an
account of my property from Judge Custis!"
The wife sat down and began to cry.
"I'll take the carriage after breakfast, mamma, and seek him at the Furnace
or wherever he may be. Those bog ores have given him a great deal of
trouble."
"I wish I had never heard of bog ore," exclaimed Mrs. Custis. "When the
money was in bank, there was no ore about it. He goes to the forest looking
like a magistrate and a gentleman; he always comes back looking like a
bog-trotter and a drunkard. There must be women in it!"
Here, in an impulse of weak rage, the poor lady got up and walked to her
mirror and looked at her face. Apparently satisfied that such charms were
trampled on, she dried her tears altogether, and resumed:

"Ginny, go out of the room! (to the neat mulatto lass). Vesta, my dear
daughter, I would not cast a stain upon you for the world; but flesh and
blood will cry out. If your father don't do better I will separate from him,
and leave Princess Anne!"
"Why, mother!"
The daughter's bright eyes were large and startled now, and their steel-blue
tint grew plainer under her rich black eyebrows.
"I will do it, if I die, unless he reforms!"
"Why, mother!"
Vesta stood with her lips parted, and her beautiful teeth just lacing the coral
of the lip. She could say no more for a long moment. Rising as she spoke,
with her head thrown back, and her mould the fuller and a pallor in her
cheeks, she looked the Eve first hearing the Creator's rebuke.
"A separation in this family?" whispered Vesta. "It would scandalize all
Maryland. It would break my heart."
"Darling daughter, my heart must be considered sometimes. I was
something before I was a Custis. I am a woman, too."
Vesta, still pale, crossed to her mother's side and kissed her.
"Don't, don't, mamma, ever harbor a thought like that again. You, who have
been so brave and patient longer than I have lived!"
"Ah, Vesta, it is the length of injury that wears us out! What if something
should happen to us? None are so unfit to bear poverty as we."
"We cannot be poor," said the daughter, soothingly. "Don't you remember,
mother, where it says: 'As thy day, so shall thy strength be'?".
"My child," Mrs. Custis replied, "your day is young. Life looks hopeful to
you. I am growing old, and where is the arm on which I should be leaning?
What are we but two women left? There is another passage on which I often
think when we sit so often alone: 'Two women shall be grinding at the mill:
the one shall be taken and the other left!' Is that you, or is it I? Listen, my

child! it is time that you should feel the melancholy truth! Your father's
habits have mastered him. He is beyond reclamation!"
Vesta was kneeling, and she slowly raised her head and looked at her
mother, with her nostrils dilated. Mrs. Custis felt uneasy before the aroused
mind of her child.
"Don't look at me so, Vesta," the poor lady pleaded. "I thought you ought to
know it."
"How dare you say that of my father? Of Judge Custis?"
As they were in this suspense of feeling, wheels were heard. The daughter
went to the window and looked down, and then returned to her mother's ear.
"Hush, mother, it is papa. Now, wash your eyes at the toilet. Let us meet
him cheerfully. Never say again that he is beyond reclamation, while we can
try!"
A kiss smoothed Mrs. Custis's countenance. Vesta was dressed for breakfast
in a few moments, and descended to the library and was received in her
father's arms. He held her there a long while, and held her close, and by
little fits renewed his embrace, but she felt that his breath was feverish and
his arms trembled. Looking up at him she saw, indeed, that he was flushed,
yet haggard and careworn.
"Vessy," he spoke with a feeble attempt to smile, "I want a glass of brandy.
Mine gave out at the Furnace, and the morning ride has weakened me.
Where is the key?"
She looked at him with a half-glance, so that he might not suspect, as if to
measure his need of stimulant. Then, without a word, she led the way to the
dining-room and unlocked the liquor closet, and turned her back lest he
might not drink his need from sensitiveness.
"Naughty man," said Vesta, standing off and looking at him when he was
done. "I was going down for you to the Furnace after breakfast. We will
have no more of this truantry. Mamma and I have set our feet down! You
must come back from the Furnace every night, and go again in the morning,

like other business men. Be very kind to mamma this morning, sir! She
feels your neglect."
Vesta had already rung for the Judge's valet, who now appeared, drew off
his boots, supplied his slippers and dressing-gown, and led the way to his
bath. In a quarter of an hour he reappeared, looking better, and he
irresolutely turned again towards the dining-room, smiling suggestively at
Vesta.
"Not that way," spoke she. "Here is mamma, and we are ready for prayers.
Here is the place in the Bible."
They all went to the family room, where the dressing-maids of Vesta and
her mother were waiting for the usual morning prayers. Vesta placed the
open Bible on her father's knee, and he began absently and stumblingly to
read. It was in the book of Samuel, and seemed to be some old Jewish
mythology. He suddenly came to a verse which arrested his sensibilities by
its pathos:
"'And David sent messengers to Ish-bosheth, Saul's son, saying, Deliver me
my wife Michal.... And Ish-bosheth sent, and took her from her husband,
even from Phaltiel, the son of Laish. And her husband went with her along
weeping behind her.... Then said Abner unto him: Go, return. And he
returned.'"
Judge Custis saw at once the picture this compact history aroused. The
inexorable David, perhaps, had married another's love. Occasion had arisen
to embitter her kin, and they took her back and gave her in happiness to her
pining lover. But, again, the man of correct habits triumphed over the sons
of the king, and despatched Abner to tear his wife from her true husband's
arms. Poor Phaltiel followed her weeping, until ordered to go back—and
back he went, forever desolate.
The scene recalled the brutal demand of his creditor upon his child. The
Judge's eyes silently o'erflowed, and he could not see.
Vesta had watched him closely, as her silent magistracy detected a great
anxiety or illness in her father. Lest her mother might also notice it, she
interposed in the lesson, as was her habit, by reading the Episcopal form of
prayer, in which they all bent their heads. Once or twice, as she went on,

she detected a suppressed sob, especially at the paragraph: "Thou who
knowest the weakness and corruption of our nature, and the manifold
temptations which we daily meet with, we humbly beseech thee to have
compassion on our infirmities and to give us the constant assistance of thy
Holy Spirit, that we may be effectually restrained from sin and excited to
our duty!"
They went to the breakfast-table, and the Judge's countenance was down.
He bit off some toast and filled his mouth with tea, but could not swallow.
A hand softly touched his elbow, and, looking there, he saw a wine-glass
full of brandy softly glide to the spot. As he looked up and saw the rich,
yearning face of his dark-eyed daughter tenderly consulting his weakness,
his heart burst forth; he leaned his head upon the table and cried, between
drink and grief:
"Darling, we are ruined!"
Mrs. Custis at once arose, and looked frightenedly at the Judge. Vesta as
quickly turned to the servants and motioned them to go.
"No, let them hear it!" raved Judge Custis, perceiving the motion. "They are
interested, like us. They must be sold, too. Faithful servants! Perhaps it may
warn them to escape in time!"
The servants, bred like ladies, quietly left the room.
Mrs. Custis, growing paler, exclaimed:
"Daniel Custis, have you lost everything in that furnace?"
"Everything!"
"And my money, too?"
"Yes."
"Merciful God!"
Before the weak lady could fall Vesta's arm was around her, and her finger
on the table-bell. Servants entered and Mrs. Custis was carried out, her
daughter following.

When Vesta returned her father was walking up and down the floor with his
long silk handkerchief in both hands, weeping bitterly, and speaking broken
syllables. She looked at him a moment with all the might of a daughter, first
called on to act alone in a great crisis. The feeling she was wont to hold
towards him, of perfect pride, had received a blow in her mother's
expression: "Your father's habits have mastered him beyond reclamation."
Could this be true; that he, the grand, the kind, the gentleman, was beneath
the diver's reach, the plummet's sounding, where light could not pierce, nor
Hope overtake? Her father, the first gentleman in Somerset, a drunkard,
going ever downward towards the gutter, and no ray of heaven to beam
upon his grave!
She saw his danger now: it was written on his face, where the image of God
shone dim that had once been crowned there. Hair thinner, and very gray;
the rich, dark eyes intimidated, as if manly confidence was gone; the skin
no more the pure scroll of regular life written in the healthy fluid of the
heart, but faded, yet spotted with alcohol; on the nose and lips signs of
coarser sensuality; the large skeleton bent and the nervous temperament
shattered. This father had been until this moment Vesta's angel. Now, there
might not be an angel in the universe to fly to his rescue. Deep, dreadful
humility descended into the daughter's spirit.
"God forgive me!" she thought, "how blind and how proud and sinful I have
been!"
She walked over to her father tenderly and kissed him, and then, drawing
his weaker inclination by hers, brought him to a sofa, placed a pillow for
him, and made him stretch his once proud form there. Procuring a bowl of
water, she washed his face free of tears with a napkin, and bathed it in
cologne. The voluptuous nature of the Judge yielded to the perfume and the
easy position, and he sobbed himself to sleep like an exhausted child.
Sitting by the sleeping bankrupt, watching his breast rise and fall, and
hearing his coarse snoring, as if fiends within were snarling in rivalry for
the possession of him, Vesta felt that the life which was unconscious there
was the fountain of her own, and, loving no man else, she felt her heart like
a goldfish of that fountain, go around and around it throbbingly.

Then first arose the wish, often in woman's life repeated, to have been born
a man and know how to help her father. That suggested that she had
brothers who ought to be summoned, and confer with their father; but now
it occurred to her that every one of them had leaned upon him; and, though
conscious that it was wicked, Vesta felt her pride rise against the thought
that any being outside of that house, even a brother, should know of its
disgrace.
What could she do? She thought of all her jewels, her riding mare, her
watch, her father's own gifts, and then the thought perished that these could
help him.
Could she not earn something by her voice, which had sung to such praises?
Alas! that voice had lost the ingredient of hope, and she feared to unclose
her lips lest it might come forth in agony, crying, "God, have mercy!"
"I have nothing," said Vesta to herself; "except love for these two martyrs,
my father and mother. No, nothing can be done until he awakens and tells
me the worst. Meantime it would be wicked for me to increase the agitation
already here, and where I must be the comforter."

Chapter VII.
JACK-O'-LANTERN IRON.

Mrs. Custis was in no situation to give annoyance for that day, as a sick-
headache seized her and she kept her room. Infirm of will, purely social in
her marriage relations, and never aiming higher than respectability, she
missed the coarse mark of her husband who, with all his moral defections,
probably was her moral equal, his vital standard higher, his tone a genial
hypocrisy, and at bottom he was a democrat.
Mrs. Custis had no insight nor variability of charity; her mind, bounded by
the municipal republic of Baltimore, which esteems itself the world,
particularly among its mercantile aristocracy, who live like the old Venetian
nobility among their flat lagoons, and do commerce chiefly with the Turk in
the more torrid and instinctive Indies and South. Amiable, social, afraid of
new ideas, frugal of money; if hospitable at the table, with a certain
spiritedness that is seldom intellectual, but a beauty that powerfully attracts,
till, by the limited sympathies beneath it, the husband from the outer world
discerns how hopelessly slavery and caste sink into an old shipping society,
the Baltimore that ruled the Chesapeake had no more perfected product than
Mrs. Custis.
Her modesty and virtue were as natural as her prejudices; she believed that
marriage was the close of female ambition, and marrying her children was
the only innovation to be permitted. Certain accomplishments she thought
due to woman, but none of them must become masculine in prosecution; a
professional woman she shrank from as from an infidel or an abolitionist;
reading was meritorious up to an orthodox point, but a passion for new
books was dangerous, probably irreligious. To lose one's money was a
crime; to lose another's money the unforgiven sin, because that was
Baltimore public opinion, which she thought was the only opinion entitled
to consideration. The old Scotch and Irish merchants there had made it the
law that enterprise was only excusable by success, and that success only
branded an innovator. A good standard of society, therefore, had barely

permitted Judge Custis to take up the bog-ore manufacture, and, failing in
it, his wife thought he was no better than a Jacobin.
On the Eastern Shore, where society was formed before Glasgow and
Belfast had colonized upon the Chesapeake with their precise formulas of
life, a gentler benevolence rose and descended upon the ground every day,
like the evaporations of those prolific seas which manure the thin soil
unfailingly. Religion and benevolence were depositions rather than dogmas
there; moderate poverty was the not unwelcome expectation, wealth a
subject of apprehensive scruples, kindness the law, pride the exception, and
grinding avarice, like Meshach Milburn's, was the mark of the devil
entering into the neighbor and the fellow-man.
Judge Custis was representative of his neighbors except in his Virginia
voluptuousness; his neighbors were neither prudes nor hypocrites, and he
respected them more than the arrogant race in the old land of Accomac and
in the Virginia peninsulas, whose traits he had almost lost. Sometimes it
seemed to him that the last of the cavalier stock was his daughter, Vesta.
From him it had nearly departed, and his sense of moral shortcomings
expanded his heart and made him tenderly pious to his kind, if not to God.
He admired new-comers, new business modes, and Northern intruders and
ideas, feeling that perhaps the last evidence of his aristocracy from nature
was a chivalric resignation. The pine-trees were saying to him: "Ye shall go
like the Indians, but be not inhospitable to your successors, and leave them
your benediction, that the great bay and its rivers may be splendid with
ships and men, though ye are perished forever." A perception of the energy
of his countrymen, and a pride in it, without any mean reservation, though it
might involve his personal humiliation, was Judge Custis's only remaining
claim to heaven's magnanimity. Still, rich in human nature, he was beloved
by his daughter with all her soul.
He awoke long after noon, in body refreshed, and a glass of milk and a
plover broiled on toast were ready for him to eat, with some sprigs of new
celery from the garden to feed his nerves. He made this small meal silently,
and Vesta said, as the tray was removed:
"Now, papa, before we leave this room, you are to tell me the whole injury
you have suffered, and what all of us can do to assist you; for if you had

succeeded the reward would have been ours, and we must divide the pains
of your misfortune with you without any regret. Courage, papa! and let me
understand it."
The Judge feebly looked at Vesta, then searched his mind with his eyes
downcast, and finally spoke:
"My child, I am the victim of good intentions and self-enjoyment. I am less
than a scoundrel and worse than a fool. I am a fraud, and you must be made
to see it, for I fear you have been proud of me."
"Oh, father, I have!" said Vesta, with an instant's convulsion. "You were my
God."
"Let us throw away idolatry, my darling. It is the first of all the sins. How
loud speaks the first commandment to us this moment: 'Thou shalt have no
other gods before me'?"
"I have broken it," sobbed Vesta, "I loved you more than my Creator."
"Vesta," spoke the Judge, "you are the only thing of value in all my house.
The work of nature in you is all that survives the long edifice of our pride.
The treasure of your beauty and love still makes me rich to thieves, who lie
in ambush all around us. We are in danger, we are pursued. O God! pity,
pity the pure in heart!"
As the Judge, under his strong earnestness, so rare in him of late, threw
wide his arms, and raised his brow in agony, Vesta felt her idolatry come
back. He was so grand, standing there in his unaffected pain and
helplessness, that he seemed to her some manly Prometheus, who had
worked with fire and iron, to the exasperation of the jealous gods.
Admiration dried her tears, and she forgot her father's references to herself.
"What is iron?" she asked. "Tell me why you wanted to make iron! If I can
enter into your mind and sympathize with the hopes you have had, it will
lift my soul from the ground. Papa, I should have asked for this lesson long
ago."
The Judge strode up and down till she repeated the question, and had
brought him to his seat. He collected his thoughts, and resumed his worldly

tone as he proceeded, with his old cavalier volatility, to tell the tale of iron.
"I have duplicated loans," he said at last, "on the same properties, incurring,
I fear, a stigma upon my family and character; as well as the ruin of our
fortune."
Vesta arose with pale lips and a sinking heart.
"Oh, father," she whispered, in a frightened tone, "who knows this terrible
secret!"
"Only one man," said the Judge, cowering down to the carpet, with his
courage and volatility immediately gone, "old Meshach Milburn knows it
all! He has purchased the duplicate notes of protest, and holds them with his
own. He has me in his power, and hates me. He will expose me, unless I
submit to an awful condition."
"What is it, father?"
The Judge looked up in terror, and, meeting Vesta's pale but steady gaze,
hid his face and groaned:
"Oh! it is too disgraceful to tell. It will break your mother's heart."
"Tell me at once!" exclaimed Vesta, in a low and hollow tone. "What further
disgrace can this monster inflict upon us than to expose our dishonor? Can
he kill us more than that?"
"I know not how to tell you, Vessy. Spare me, my darling! My face I hide
for shame."
There was a pause, while Vesta, with her mind expanded to touch every
point of suggestion, stood looking down at her father, yet hardly seeing
him. He did not move.
Vesta stooped and raised her father's face to find some solution of his
mysterious evasion. He shut his eyes as if she burned him with her
wondering look.
"Papa, look at me this instant! You shall not be a coward to me."

He broke from her hands and retreated to a window, looking at her, but with
a timorous countenance.
"I wish you to go this moment and find your creditor, Mr. Milburn, and
bring him to me. You must obey me, sir!"
The father raised his hands as if to protest, but before he could speak a
shadow fell upon the window, and the figure of a small, swarthy man
covered with a steeple-crowned hat advanced up the front steps.
"Saviour, have mercy!" murmured Judge Custis, "the wolf is at the door."
Vesta took her father in her arms, and kissed him once assuringly.
"Papa, go send a servant to open the door. Have Mr. Milburn shown into
this room to await me. Do you go and engage my mother affectionately, and
both of you remain in your chamber till I am ready to call you."
The proximity of the dreadful creditor had almost paralyzed Judge Custis,
and he glided out like a ghost.

Chapter VIII.
THE HAT FINDS A RACK.

Meshach Milburn had locked the store after writing some letters, and had
taken the broad street for Judge Custis's gate. The news of his
disappearance towards the Furnace, with an extravagant livery team, had
spread among all the circle around the principal tavern, and they were
discussing the motive and probabilities of the act, with that deep inner
ignorance so characteristic of an instinctive society. Old Jimmy Phœbus, a
huge man, with a broad face and small forehead, was called upon for his
view.
"It's nothin' but a splurge," said Jimmy; "sooner or later everybody splurges
—shows off! Meshach's jest spilin' with money and he must have a splurge
—two hosses and a nigger. If it ain't a splurge I can't tell what ails him to
save my life."
A general chorus went up of "Dogged if I kin tell to save my life!"
Levin Dennis, the terrapin-buyer, made a wild guess, as follows:
"Meshach, I reckon, is a goin' into the hoss business. He's a ben in
everything else, and has tuk to hosses. If it tain't hosses, I can't tell to save
my life!"
All the lesser intellects of the party executed a low chuckle, spun around
half-way on their boot-heels and back again, and muttered: "Not to save my
life!"
Jack Wonnell, wearing one of the new bell-crowns, and barefooted, and
looking like a vagrant who had tried on a militia grenadier's imposing
bearskin hat, let off this irrelevant addendum:
"Ole Milbun's gwyn to see a gal. Fust time a man changes his regler course
wilently, it's a gal. I went into my bell-crowns to git a gal. Milbun's gwyn
get a gal out yonda in forest. If that ain't it, can't tell to save m' life!"

The smaller fry, not being trained to suggestion, grinned, held their mouths
agape, executed the revolution upon; one heel, and echoed: "Dogged ef a
kin tell t' save m' life!".
"He's a comin', boys, whooep!" exclaimed Jimmy Phœbus. "Now we'll all
take off our hats an' do it polite, for, by smoke! thar's goin' to be hokey-
pokey of some kind or nuther in Prencess Anne!"
The smallish man in the Guy Fawkes hat and the old, ultra-genteel, greenish
gaiters, walked towards them with his resinous bold eyes to the front, his
nose informing him of what was in the air like any silken terrier's, and yet
with a pallor of the skin as of a sick person's, and less than his daily
expression of hostility to Princess Anne.
"He's got the ager," remarked Levin Dennis, "them's the shakes, comin' on
him by to-morrey, ef I know tarrapin bubbles!"
The latter end only of the nearest approach to profanity current in that land
was again heard, fluttering around: "to save my life!"
Jimmy Phœbus had the name of being descended from a Greek pirate, or
patriot, who had settled on the Eastern Shore, and Phœbus looked it yet,
with his rich brown complexion, broad head, and Mediterranean eyes.
"Good-afternoon, Mr. Milburn!" spoke Jimmy, loud and careless.
"Good-afternoon, Mr. Phœbus. Gentlemen, good-afternoon!"
As he responded, with a voice hardly genial but placating, Milburn lifted
his ancient and formidable hat, and in an instant seemed to come a century
nearer to his neighbors. His stature was reduced, his unsociableness seemed
modified; he now looked to be a smallish, friendless person, as if some
ownerless dog had darted through the street, and heard a kind chirp at the
tavern door, where his reception had been stones. His voice, with a little
tremor in it, emboldened Levin Dennis also to speak:
"Look out for fevernager this month, Mr. Milburn!"
Meshach bowed his head, gliding along as if bashfully anxious to pass.
"Nice weather for drivin'!" added Jack Wonnell, having also taken off his
own tile of frivolity, to feel the effect; but this remark was regarded by the

group as too forward, and a low chorus ran round of "Jack Wonnell can't
help bein' a fool to save his life!"
Milburn said to himself, passing on: "Are those voices kinder than usually,
or am I more timid? What is it in the air that makes everything so acute, and
my cheeks to tingle? Am I sick, or is it Love?"
The word frightened him, and the sand under his feet seemed to crack; a
woodpecker in an old tree tapped as if it was the tree's old heart quickened
by something; the houses all around looked like live objects, with their
windows fixed upon his walk, like married folks' eyes. As he came in sight
of Judge Custis's residence, so expressive of old respect and long intentions,
the money-lender almost stopped, so mild and peacefully it looked at him—
so undisturbed, while he was palpitating.
"Why this pain?" thought Milburn. "Am I afraid? That house is mine. Do I
fear to enter my own? And yet it does not fear me. It has been there so long
that it has no fears, and every window in it faces benignant to my coming.
The three gables survey yonder forest landscape like three old magistrates
on the bench, administering justice to a county where never till now was
there a ravisher!"
The thought produced a moment's intellectual pride in him, like lawless
power's uneasy paroxysm. "It is the Forest these gentles have to fear to-
day!" he thought, resentfully, then stopped, with another image his word
aroused:
"What has that forest ever felt of injury or hate, with every cabin-door
unlatched, no robber feared by any there, the blossoms on the negro's
peachtree, the ripe persimmons on the roadside, plenteous to every
forester's child, and humility and affection making all richer, without a
dollar in the world, than I, the richest upstart of the forest, compelled to buy
affection, like an indifferent slave!"
A large dog at Custis's home, seeing him walk so slowly, came down the
path to the gate, also walking slow, and showed neither animosity nor
interest, except mechanically to walk behind him towards the door.
"The dog knows me," thought the quickened heart of Meshach, "from life-
long seeing of me, but never wagged his tail at me in all that time. Could I

acquire the heart even of this dog, though I might buy him? My debtor's
step would still be most welcome to him, and he would eat my food in
strangeness and fear."
Milburn walked up the steps, and sounded the substantial brass knocker. It
struck four times, loud and deep, and the stillness that followed was louder
yet, like the unknown thing, after sentence has been passed. He seemed to
be there a very long time with his heart quite vacant, as if the debtor's
knocker had scared every chatterer out of it, and yet his temples and ears
were ringing. He was thinking of sounding the knocker again, when a lady's
servant, partly white, rolled back the bolt, and bowed to his question
whether the Judge was in.
He entered the broad hall of that distinguished residence, and taking the
Entailed Hat from his head, hung it up at last, where better head-coverings
had been wont to keep equal society, on a carved mahogany rack of colonial
times. The venerable object, once there, gave a common look to everything,
as Meshach thought, and deepened his personal sense of unworthiness. He
tried to feel angry, but apprehension was too strong for passion even to be
simulated.
"O, discriminating God!" he felt, within, "is it not enough to create us so
unequal that we must also cringe in spirit, and acknowledge it! I expected to
feel triumphant when I lodged my despised hat in this man's house, but I
feel meaner than before."
The room, whose door was opened by the lady's maid, was the library,
containing three cumbrous cases of books, and several portraits in oil, with
deep, gilded frames, a map of Virginia and its northeastern environs,
including all the peninsula south of the Choptank river and Cape Henlopen;
and near the door was a tall clock, that a giant might stand in, solemnly
cogging and waving time, and giving the monotony of everlasting evening
to the place, which was increased by the flickering fire of wood on the tall
brass fire-irons, before which some high-backed, wide, comfortable leather
chairs were drawn, all worn to luxurious attitudes, as if each had been the
skin of Judge Custis and his companions, recently evacuated.
A woman's rocking-chair was disposed among them, as though every other
chair deferred to it. This was the first article to arrest Milburn's attention, so

different, so suggestive, almost a thing of superstition, poised, like a
woman's instinct and will, upon nothing firm, yet, like the sphere it moved
upon, traversing a greater arc than a giant's seat would fill. Purity and
conquest, power and welcome, seemed to abide within it, like the empty
throne in Parliament.
Milburn, being left alone, touched the fairy rocker with his foot. It started
so easily and so gracefully, that, when it died away, he pressed his lips to
the top of it, nearest where her neck would be, and whispered aloud, with
feeling, "God knows that kiss, at least, was pure!"
He looked at the portraits, and, though they were not inscribed, he guessed
at them all, right or wrong, from the insight of local lore or envious
interpretation.
"Yon saucy, greedy, superserviceable rogue," thought Meshach, "with wine
and beef in his cheeks, and silver and harlotry in his eye, was the Irish
tavern-keeper of Rotterdam, who kept a heavy score against the banished
princes whom Cromwell's name ever made to swear and shiver, and they
paid him in a distant office in Accomac, where they might never see him
and his bills again, and there they let him steal most of the revenue, and, of
course, his loyalty was in proportion to his booty. Many a time, no doubt,
he was procurer for both royal brothers, Charles and James, making his
tavern their stew, with Betty Killigrew, or Lucy Walters, or Katy Peg, or
even Anne Hyde, the mother of a queen—of her who was the Princess
Anne, godmother of our worshipful town here. I have not read in vain,"
concluded Meshach, "because my noble townsmen drove me to my cell!"
The next portrait was clothed in military uniform, with a higher type of
manhood, shrewd and vigilant, but magisterial. "That should be Major-
general John Custis," thought Milburn, looking at it, "son of John the
tapster, and a marrying, shifty fellow, who first began greatness as a salt-
boiler on these ocean islands, till his father's friend, Charles II., in a merry
mood, made Henry Bennet, the king's bastard son's father-in-law, Earl of
Arlington and lessee of Virginia. All the province for forty shillings a year
rent! Those were pure, economical times, indeed, around the court. So salt-
boiler John flunkeyed to Arlington's overseers, named his farm 'Arlington,'
hunted and informed upon the followers of the Puritan rebel Bacon, then

turned and fawned upon King William, too. His grandchildren, all well
provided for, spread around this bay. So much for politics in a merchant's
hands!"
The tone of Meshach's comment had somewhat raised his courage, and a
sense of pleasurable interest in the warm room and genial surroundings led
him to pass the time, which was of considerable length, quite contentedly,
till Judge Custis was ready.

Meanwhile, the steeple-top hat was giving some silent astonishment to the
house-servants, assembled to gaze upon it from the foot of the hall. The
neat chamber-servant, Virgie, had carried the wondrous information to the
colonnade that the dreadful creditor had come, and Roxy, the table waiter,
had carried it from the colonnade to the kitchen, where the common
calamity immediately produced a revolution against good manners.
"Hab he got dat debbil hat on he head, chile?" inquired Aunt Hominy,
laying down the club with which she was beating biscuit-dough on the
block.
"Yes, aunty, he's left it on the hat-rack. I'm afraid to go past it to the do'."
Aunt Hominy threw the club on the blistered bulk of dough, and retreated
towards the big black fireplace, with a face expressive of so much fright
and cunning humor together that it seemed about to turn white, but only got
as far as a pucker and twitches.
"De Lord a massy!" exclaimed Aunt Hominy, "chillen, le's burn dat hat in
de fire! Maybe it'll liff de trouble off o' dis yer house. We got de hat jess
wha' we want it, chillen. Roxy, gal, you go fotch it to Aunt Hominy!"
The girl started as if she had been asked to take up a snake: "'Deed, Aunt
Hominy, I wouldn't touch it to save my life. Nobody but ole Samson ever
did that!"
"Go' long, gal!" cried Aunt Hominy, "didn't Miss Vessy hole dat ar' hat one
time, an' pin a white rose in it? Didn't he, dat drefful Meshach Milbun, offer

Miss Vessy a gole dollar, an' she wouldn' have none of his gole? Dat she
did! Virgie, you go git dat hat, chile! Poke it off de rack wid my pot-hook
heah. 'Twon't hurt you, gal! I'll sprinkle ye fust wid camomile an' witch-
hazel dat I keep up on de chimney-jamb."
Aunt Hominy turned towards the broadly notched chimney sides, where
fifty articles of negro pharmacy were kept—bunches of herbs, dried
peppers, bladders of seeds, and bottles of every mystic potency.
"Aunty," answered Virgie, "if I wasn't afraid of that Bad Man, I would be
afraid to move that hat, because Miss Vessy would be mortified. Think of
her seeing me treating a visitor's things like that. Why, I'd rather be sold!"
"Dat hat," persisted Aunt Hominy, "is de ruin ob dis family. Dat hat, gals, de
debbil giv' ole Meshach, an' made him wear it fo' de gift ob gittin' all de
gole in Somerset County. Don't I know when he wore it fust? Dat was when
he begun to git all de gole. Fo' dat he had been po' as a lizzer, sellin' to
niggers, cookin' fo' heseff, an' no' count, nohow. He sot up in de loft of his
ole sto' readin' de Bible upside down to git de debbil's frenship. De debbil
come in one night, and says to ole Meshach: 'Yer's my hat! Go, take it,
honey, and measure land wid it, and all de land you measure is yo's, honey!'
An' Meshach's measured mos' all dis county in. Jedge Custis's land is de
last."
The relation affected both girls considerably, and the group of little colored
boys and girls still more, who came up almost chilled with terror, to listen;
but it produced the greatest effect on Aunt Hominy herself, whose
imagination, widened in the effort, excited all her own fears, and gave
irresistible vividness to her legend.
"How can his hat measure people's lands in, Aunty?" asked Virgie, drawing
Roxy to her by the waist for their mutual protection.
"Why, chile, he measures land in by de great long shadows dat debbil's hat
throws. Meshach, he sots his eyes on a good farm. Says he, 'I'll measure dat
in!' So he gits out dar some sun-up or sundown, when de sun jest sots a'mos'
on de groun, an' ebery tree an' fence-pos' and standin' thing goes away over
de land, frowin' long crooked shadows. Dat's de time Meshach stans up,
wid dat hat de debbil gib him to make him longer, jest a layin' on de fields

like de shadow of a big church-steeple. He walks along de road befo' de
farm, and wherever dat hat makes a mark on de ground all between it an'
where he walks is ole Meshach's land. Dat's what he calls his mortgage!"
The children had their mouths wide open; the maids heard with faith only
less than fear.
"But, Aunt Hominy," spoke Roxy, "he never measured in Judge Custis's
house, and all of us in it, that is to be sold."
"Didn't I see him a doin' of it?" whispered Aunt Hominy, stooping as if to
creep, in the contraction of her own fears, and looking up into their faces
with her fists clinched. "He's a ben comin' along de fence on de darkest,
cloudiest nights dis long a time, like a man dat was goin' to rob something,
and peepin' up at Miss Vessy's window. He took de dark nights, when de
streets of Prencess Anne was clar ob folks, an' de dogs was in deir cribs, an'
nuffin' goin' aroun' but him an' wind an' cold an' rain. One night, while he
was watchin' Miss Vessy's window like a black crow, from de shadow of de
tree, I was a-watchin' of him from de kitchen window. De moon, dat had
been all hid, come right from behin' de rain-clouds all at once, gals, an'
scared him like. De moon was low on de woods, chillen, an' as ole Meshach
turned an' walked away, his debbil's shadow swept dis house in. He
measured it in dat night. It's ben his ever since."
"Well," exclaimed Roxy, after a pause, "I know I wouldn't take hold of that
hat now."
"I am almost afraid to look at it," said Virgie, "but if Miss Vessy told me to
go bring it to her, I would do it."
"Le's us all go together," ventured Aunt Hominy, "and take a peep at it.
Maybe it won't hurt us, if we all go."
Aware that Judge Custis and his wife were not near, the little circle of
servants—Aunt Hominy, Virgie, Roxy, and the four children, from five to
fourteen years of age—filed softly from the kitchen through the covered
colonnade, and thence along the back passage to the end of the hall, where
they made a group, gazing with believing wonder at the King James tile.

* * * Vesta Custis, having changed her morning robe for a walking-suit, and
slightly rearranged her toilet, and knelt speechless awhile to receive the
unknown will of Heaven, came down the stairs at last, in time to catch a
glimpse of half-a-dozen servants staring at a strange old hat on the hall
rack. They hastily fled at her appearance, but the idea of the hat was also
conveyed to her own fancy by their unwonted behavior. She looked up an
instant at the queer, faded article hanging among its betters, and with a
reminiscence of childhood, and of having held it in her hand, there
descended along the intervening years upon the association, the odor of a
rose and the impression of a pair of bold, startled eyes gazing into hers. She
opened the library door, and the same eyes were looking up from her
father's easy-chair.
"Mr. Milburn, I believe?" said Vesta, walking to the visitor, and extending
her hand with native sweetness.
He arose and bowed, and hardly saw the hand in the earnest look he gave
her, as if she had surprised him, and he did not know how to express his
bashfulness. She did not withdraw the hand till he took it, and then he did
not let it go. His strong, rather than bold, look, continuing, she dropped her
eyes to the hand that mildly held her own, and then she observed, all calm
as she was, that his hand was a gentleman's, its fingers long and almost
delicate, the texture white, the palm warm, and, as it seemed to her, of
something like a brotherly pressure, respectful and gentle too.
As he did not speak immediately, Vesta returned to his face, far less
inviting, but peculiar—the black hair straight, the cheek-bones high, no real
beard upon him anywhere, the shape of the face broad and powerful, and
the chops long, while the yellowish-brown eyes, wide open and intense,
answered to the open, almost observant nostrils at the end of his straight,
fine nose. His complexion was dark and forester-like, seeming to show a
poor, unnutritious diet. He was hardly taller than Vesta. His teeth were
good, and the mouth rather small. She thought he was uncertain what to say,
or confused in his mind, though no sign of fear was visible. Vesta came to
his rescue, withdrawing her hand naturally.
"I have seen you many times, Mr. Milburn, but never here, I think."

"No, miss, I have never been here." He hesitated. "Nor anywhere in
Princess Anne. You are the first lady here to speak to me."
His words, but not his tone, intimated an inferiority or a slight. The voice
was a little stiff, appearing to be at want for some corresponding inflection,
like a man who had learned a language without having had the use of it.
"Will you sit, Mr. Milburn? You owe this visit so long that you will not be
in haste to-day. I hope you have not felt that we were inhospitable. But little
towns often encourage narrow circles, and make people more selfish than
they intend."
"You could never be selfish, miss," said Milburn, without any of the suavity
of a compliment, still carrying that wild, regarding gaze, like the eyes of a
startled ox.
Vesta faintly colored at the liberty he took. It was slightly embarrassing to
her, too, to meet that uninterpretable look of inquiry and homage; but she
felt her necessity as well as her good-breeding, and made allowance for her
visitor's want of sophistication. He was like an Indian before a mirror, in a
stolid excitement of apprehension and delight. The most beautiful thing he
ever saw was within the compass of his full sight at last, and whether to
detain it by force or persuasion he did not know.
Her dark hair, silky as the cleanest tassels of the corn, fell as naturally upon
her perfect head as her teeth, white as the milky corn-rows, moved in the
May cherries of her lips. The delicate arches of her brows, shaded by
blackbirds' wings, enriched the clear sky of her harmonious eyes, where
mercy and nobility kept company, as in heaven.
"How could you know I was unselfish, Mr. Milburn?"
"Because I have heard you sing."
"Oh, yes! You hear me in our church, I remember."
"I have heard you every Sunday that you sung there for years," said
Meshach, with hardly a change of expression.
"Are you fond of music, Mr. Milburn?"

"Yes, I like all I have ever heard—birds and you."
"I will sing for you, then," said Vesta, taking the relief the talk directed her
to. A piano was in another room, but, to avoid changing the scene, as well
as to use a simpler accompaniment for an ignorant man's ears, she brought
her guitar, and, placing it in her lap, struck the strings and the key, without
waiting, to these tender words:
"Oh, for some sadly dying note,
Upon this silent hour to float,
Where, from the bustling world remote,
The lyre might wake its melody!
One feeble strain is all can swell.
From mine almost deserted shell,
In mournful accents yet to tell
That slumbers not its minstrelsy.

"There is an hour of deep repose,
That yet upon my heart shall close,
When all that nature dreads and knows
Shall burst upon me wondrously;
Oh, may I then awake, forever,
My harp to rapture's high endeavor;
And, as from earth's vain scene I sever,
Be lost in Immortality."
Vesta ceased a few minutes, and, her visitor saying nothing, she remarked,
with emotion.
"Those lines were written at my grandfather's house, in Accomac County,
by a young clergyman from New York, who was grandfather's rector, Rev.
James Eastburn. He was only twenty-two years old when he died, at sea, of
consumption. His is the only poetry I have ever heard of, Mr. Milburn,
written in our beautiful old country here."
"I wondered if I should ever hear you sing for me," spoke Milburn, after
hesitation. "Now it is realized, I feel sceptical about it. You are there, Miss
Custis, are you not?"

Vesta was puzzled. Under other circumstances she would have been
amused, since her humor could flow freely as her music. It faintly seemed
to her that the little odd man might be cracked in the head.
"Yes, indeed, Mr. Milburn. If it were a dream, I should have no expression
all this day but song. I think I never felt so sad to sing as just now. Father is
ill. Mamma is ill. I have become the business agent of the family, and have
heard within this hour that papa is deeply involved. You are his creditor, are
you not?"
Meshach Milburn bowed.
"What is the sum of papa's notes and mortgages? Is it more than he can pay
by the sacrifice of everything?"
"Yes. He has nothing to sell at forced sale which will bring anything, but the
household servants here; these maids in the family are marketable
immediately. You would not like to sell them?"
"Sell Virgie! She was brought up with me; what right have I to sell her any
more than she has to sell me?"
"None," said Milburn, bluntly, "but there is law for it."
"To sell Roxy, too, and old Aunt Hominy, and the young children! how
could I ever pray again if they were sold? Oh! Mr. Milburn, where was your
heart, to let papa waste his plentiful substance in such a hopeless
experiment? If my singing in the church has given you happiness, why
could it not move you to mercy? Think of the despair of this family, my
father's helpless generosity, my mother's marriage settlement gone, too, and
every other son and daughter parted from them!"
"I never encouraged one moment Judge Custis's expenditure," said
Meshach, "though I lent him money. The first time he came to me to
borrow, my mind was in a liberal disposition, for you had just entered it
with your innocent attentions. I supposed he wanted a temporary
accommodation, and I gave it to him at the lowest rate one Christian would
charge another."

"You say that I influenced you to lend my father money? Why, sir, I was a
child. He has been borrowing from you since my earliest recollections."
The creditor took from his breast-pocket a large leather wallet, and, arising,
laid its contents on the table. He opened a piece of folded paper, and drew
from it two objects; one a lock of blue-black hair like his own, and the other
a pressed and faded rose.
"This flower," said Milburn, with reverence, "Judge Custis's daughter
fastened in my derided hat. I kept it till it was dead, and laid it away with
my mother's hair, the two religious objects of my life. That faded rose made
me your father's creditor, Miss Custis."
Vesta took the rose, and looked at him with surprise and inquiry.
"Oh, why did not this flower speak for us?" she said; "to open your lips
after that, to save my father? Then you informed yourself, and knew that he
was hurrying to destruction, but still you gave him money at higher
interest."
Milburn looked at her with diminished courage, but sincerity, and
answered: "Your voice sang between us, Miss Custis, every time he came. I
did not admit to myself what it was, but the feeling that I was being drawn
near you still opened my purse to your father, till he has drained me of the
profits of years, which I gave him with a lavish fatality, though grasping
every cent from every source but that. I did know, then, he could not
probably repay me, but every Sabbath at the church you sang, and that
seemed some compensation. I was bewitched; indistinct visions of gratitude
and recognition from you filled the preaching with concourses of angels, all
bearing your image, and hovering above me. The price I paid for that
unuttered and ever-repelled hope has been princely, but never grudged, and
it has been pure, I believe, or Heaven would have punished me. The more I
ruined myself for your father, the more successful my ventures were in all
other places; if you were my temptation, it had the favor or forgiveness of
the God in whose temple it was born."
Vesta arose also, with a frightened spirit.
"Do I understand you?" she said, with her rich gray eyes wide open under
their startled lashes. "My father has spoken of a degrading condition? Is it

to love you?"
For the first time Meshach Milburn dropped his eyes.
"I never supposed it possible for you to love me," he said, bitterly. "I
thought God might permit me some day to love you."
"Do you know what love is?" asked Vesta, with astonishment.
"No."
"How came you, then, to be interpreting my good acts so basely, carrying
even my childhood about in your evil imagination, and cursing my father's
sorrow with the threat of his daughter's slavery?"
Milburn heard with perfect humility these hard imputations.
"You have not loved, I think, Miss Custis?" he said, with a slight flush. "I
have believed you never did."
He raised his eyes again to her face.
"I loved my father above everything," faltered Vesta. "I saw no man,
besides, admiring my father."
"Then I displaced no man's right, coveting your image. Sometimes it
seemed you were being kept free so long to reward my silent worship. I do
not know what love is, but I know the gifts of God, as they bloom in nature,
repel no man's devotion. The flowers, the birds, and the forest, delighted my
childhood; my youth was spent in the study of myself and man; at last a
beautiful child appeared to me, spoke her way to my soul, and it could
never expel her glorious presence. All things became subordinate to her,
even avarice and success. She kept me a Christian, or I should have become
utterly selfish; she kept me humble, for what was my wealth when I could
not enter her father's house! I am here by a destiny now; the power that
called you to this room, so unexpectedly to me, has borne us onward to the
secret I dreaded to speak to you. Dare I go further?"
She was trying to keep down her insulted feelings, and not say something
that should forever exasperate her father's creditor, but the possibility of
marrying him was too tremendous to reply.

"This moment is a great one," continued Milburn, firmly, "for I feel that it is
to terminate my visions of happiness, and of kindness as well. You have
expressed yourself so indignantly, that I see no thought of me has ever
lodged in your mind. Why should it have ever done so? Though I almost
dreamed it had, because you filled my life so many years with your rich
image, I thought you might have felt me, like an apparition, stealing around
this dwelling often in the dark and rain, content with the ray of light your
window threw upon the deserted street. Now I see that I was a weak dunce,
whose passion nature lent no nerve of hers to convey even to your notice.
Better for me that I had hugged the debasing reality of my gold, and lost my
eyes to everything but its comfort!"
He looked towards the door. Vesta sat down in the fairy rocker, and detained
him.
"You have told me the feeling you think you had, Mr. Milburn. Poor as we
Custises are now, it will not do to be proud. How did you ever think that
feeling could be returned by me? My youth, my connections, everything,
would forbid me, without haughtiness, to see a suitor in you. Then, you
took no means to turn my attention towards you. You could have been
neighborly, had you desired. You did not even wear the commonest
emblems of a lover—"
She paused. Milburn said to himself:
"Ah! that accursed Hat."
The interruption ruffled his temper:
"I have had reasons, also proud, Miss Custis, to be consistent with my
perpetual self here. I will put the substantial merits of my case to you, since
I see that I am not likely to make myself otherwise attractive. This house is
already mine. The law will, in a few weeks, put me in possession of your
father's entire property. I shall change outward circumstances with him in
Princess Anne. He is too old to adopt my sacrifices, and recover his
situation; he may find some shifting refuge with his sons and daughters,
but, even if his spirit could brook that dependence, it would be very
unnecessary, when, by marrying his creditor, you can retain everything he

now has to make his family respectable. I offer you his estate as your
marriage portion!"
He took up from the table the notes her father had negotiated, and laid them
in her lap.
Vesta sat rocking slowly, and deeply agitated. She had in her mouth the
comfort and honor of her parents, which she could confer in a single word.
It was a responsibility so mighty that it made her tremble.
"Oh! what shall I say?" she thought. "It will be a sin to say 'Yes.' To say 'No'
would be a crime."
"You shall retain every feature of your home—your servants, your mother,
and her undiminished portion; your liberty in the fullest sense. I will
contribute to send your father to the legislature or to congress, to sustain his
pride, and keep him well occupied. The Furnace he may appear to have sold
to me, and I will accept the unpopularity of closing it. I ask only to serve
you, and inhabit your daily life, like one of these negroes you are kind to,
and if I am ever harsh to you, Miss Vesta, I swear to surrender you to your
family, and depart forever."
Vesta shook her head.
"There is no separation but one," she said, "when Heaven has been called
down to the marriage solemnity. It is before that act that we must consider
everything. How could I make you happy? My own happiness I will
dismiss. Yours must then comprehend mine. Kindness might make me
grateful, but gratitude will not satisfy your love."
"Yes," exclaimed Milburn, chasing up his advantage with tremulous ardor;
"the long famine of my heart will be thankful for a dry crust and a cup of
ice. Here at the fireside let me sit and warm, and hear the rustle of your
dress, and grow in heavenly sensibility. You will redeem a savage, you will
save a soul!"
"It is not the price I must pay to do this, I would have you consider, sir,"
Vesta replied, with her attention somewhat arrested by his intensity; "it is
the price you are paying—your self-respect, perhaps—by the terms on
which you obtain me. It may never be known out of this family that I

married you for the sake of my father and mother. But how am I to prevent
you from remembering it, especially when you say that I am the sum of
your purest wishes? If your interest would consume after you obtained me,
we might, at least, be indifferent; but if it grew into real love, would you not
often accuse yourself?"
Meshach Milburn sat down, cast his large brown eyes upon the floor, and
listened in painful reflection.
"You cannot conceive I have had any real love for you?" he exclaimed,
dubiously.
"You have seen me, and desired me for your wife; that is all," said Vesta,
"that I can imagine. Lawless power could do that anywhere. To be an
obedient wife is the lot of woman; but love, such as you have some
glimmering of, is a mystic instinct so mutual, so gladdening, yet so free,
that the captivity you set me in to make me sing to you will divide us like
the wires of a cage."
"There is no bird I ever caught," said Meshach Milburn, "that did not learn
to trust me. Your comparison does not, therefore, discourage me. And you
have already sung for me, the saddest day of your life!"
A slight touch of nature in this revelation of her strange suitor called Vesta's
attention to the study of him again. With her intelligence and sense of
higher worth coming to her rescue, she thought: "Let me see all that is of
this Tartar, for, perhaps, there may be another way to his mercy."
As she recovered composure, however, she grew more beautiful in his sight,
her dark, peerless charms filling the room, her kindling eyes conveying
love, her skin like the wild plum's, and her raven brows and crown of
luxuriant hair rising upon a queenly presence worthy of an empress's
throne. Such beauty almost made Milburn afraid, but the energies of his
character were all concentrated to secure it.
"Who are you?" she asked, with a calm, searching look, cast from her
highest self-respect and alert intelligence. "Have you any relations or
connections fit to bring here—to this house, to me?"

"Not one that I know," said the forester. "I am nothing but myself, and what
you will make of me."
"Where were you born and reared?"
"The house does not stand which witnessed that misery," spoke Milburn,
with a flush of obdurate pride; "it was burned last night, not far from the
furnace which swallowed your father's substance."
"Why, I would be afraid of you, Mr. Milburn, if your errand here was not so
practical. Omens and wonders surround you. Birds forget their natural life
for you. Iron ceases to be occult when you take it up. Your birthplace in this
world disappears by fire the night before you foreclose a mortgage upon a
gentleman's daughter. Is all this sorcery inseparable from that necromancer's
Hat you wear in Princess Anne?"
She had touched the sensitive topic by a skilful approach, yet he changed
color, as if the allusion piqued him.
"Nature never rebuked my hat, Miss Vesta, and you are so like nature, it
will not occupy your thoughts. I recollect the day you decorated my old hat;
said I: 'perhaps this vagrant head-covering, after all its injuries and
wanderings, may some day find a peg beneath my own roof, and the kind
welcome of a lady like that little miss.' That was several years ago, and to-
day, for the first time, my hat is on the rack of your hall. The long wish of
the heart is not often denied. We are not responsible for it. The only
conspiracy I have plotted here, was that I did not oppose most natural
occurrences, all drawing towards this scene. My magic was hope and
humility. I dared to wear my ancestor's hat in the face of a contemptuous
and impertinent provincial public, and it gave me the pride to persevere till
I should bring it home to honors and to noble shelter. If you despise my hat,
you will despise me."
"Oh, no; Mr. Milburn! I try never to despise anything. If you wore your
family hat from some filial respect, it was, in part, piety. But was that,
indeed, your motive in being so eccentric?"
Milburn felt uneasy again. He hesitated, and said:

"In perfect truth, I fear not. There may have been something of revenge in
my mind. I had been grossly insulted."
"Is it not something of that revenge which instigates you here—even in this
profession of love?" exclaimed Vesta, judicially.
Meshach looked up, and the shadows cleared from his face.
"I can answer that truthfully, lady. Towards you, not an indignant thought
has ever harbored in my brain. It has been the opposite: protection, worship,
tender sensibility."
"Has that exceptional charity extended to my father?"
"No."
Vesta would have been exasperated, but for his candor.
"My father never insulted you, sir?"
"No, he patronized me. He meant no harm, but that old hat has worn a deep
place in my brain through carrying it so long, and it is a subject that galls
me to mention it. Yet, I must be consistent with my only eccentricity.
Wherever I may go, there goes my hat; it makes my identity, my
inflexibility; it achieves my promise to myself, that men shall respect my
hat before I die."
"Pardon me," said Vesta, not uninterested in his character, "I can understand
an eccentricity founded on family respect. We were Virginians, and that is
next to religion there. The negroes of our family share it with us. You had a
family, then?"
Milburn shook his head.
"No; not a family in the sense you mean. Generations of obscurity, a
parentage only virtuous; no tombstone anywhere, no crest nor motto, not
even a self-deluding lie of some former gentility, shaped from hand to hand
till it commits a larceny on history, and is brazen on a carriage panel! We
were foresters. We came forth and existed and perished, like the families of
ants upon the ant-hills of sand. We migrated no more than the woodpeckers
in your sycamore trees, and made no sound in events more than their

insectivorous tapping. Out yonder beyond Dividing Creek, in the thickets of
small oak and low pines, many a little farm, scratched from the devouring
forest, speckling the plains and wastes with huts and with little barns of
logs, once bore the name of Milburn through all the localities of the
Pocomoke to and beyond the great Cypress Swamp. They are dying, but
never dead. The few who live expect no recognition from me, and, happy in
their poverty, envy me nothing I have accumulated. My name has grown
hard to them, my hat is the subject of their superstitions, my ambition and
success have lost me their sympathy without giving me any other social
compensation. You behold a desperate man, a merciless creditor, a tussock
of ore from the bogs of Nassawongo, yet one whose only crimes have been
to adore you, and to wear his forefathers' hat."
"Is this pride, then, wholly insulted sensibility, Mr. Milburn?"
"I cannot say, Miss Custis. You may smile, but I think it is aristocracy."
"I think so, too," exclaimed Vesta reflectively; "you are a proud man. My
father, who has had reason to be proud, is less an aristocrat, sir, than you."
Milburn's flush came and stayed a considerable while. He was not
displeased at Vesta's compliment, though it bore the nature of an accusation.
"You are aristocratic," explained Vesta, "because you adopted the obsolete
hat of your people. Whatever vanity led you to do it, it was the satisfaction
of some origin, I think."
She checked herself, seeing that she was entering into his affairs with too
much freedom.
"I suppose that somewhere, some time," spoke the strange visitor, "some
person of my race has been influential and prosperous. Indeed, I have been
told so. He was elevated to both the magistracy and the scaffold, but my hat
had even an older origin."
"Tell me about that ancestor," said Vesta, the heartache from his greater
errand instigating her to defer it, while she was yet barely conscious that the
man was original, if not interesting.

He told a singular tale, tracing his hat to Raleigh's times and through Sir
Henry Vane to America, till it became the property of Jacob Milborne, the
popular martyr who was executed in New York, and his brethren driven into
Maryland, bringing with them the harmless hat as their only patrimony.[1]
Before he began, Milburn drew up his compact little figure and opened the
door to the hall. The wind or air from some of the large, cold apartments of
the long house, coming in by some crack or open sash, gave almost a
shriek, and scattered the fire in the chimney.
Vesta felt her blood chill a moment as her visitor re-entered with the
antediluvian hat, and placed it upon the table beneath the lamp.
It had that look of gentility victorious over decay, which suggested the
mummy of some Pharaoh, brought into a drawing-room on a learned
society's night. Vesta repressed a smile, rising through her pain, at the
gravity of the forester guest, who was about to demonstrate his aristocracy
through this old hat. It seemed to her, also, that the portraits of the Custises,
on the wall, carried indignant noses in the air at their apparently conscious
knowledge of the presence of some unburied pretender, as if, in
Westminster Abbey, the effigies of the Norman kings had slightly aroused
to feel Oliver Cromwell lying among them in state.
The hat, Vesta perceived, was Flemish, such as was popular in England
while the Netherlands was her ally against the house of Spain, and, stripped
of its ornaments, was lengthened into the hat of the Puritans.
Vesta attempted to exert her liberality and perceive some beauty in this hat,
but the utmost she could admit was the tyranny of fashion over the mind—it
seemed, over the soul itself, for this old hat, inoffensive as it was, weighed
down her spirits like a diving-bell.
The man, without his hat, had somewhat redeemed himself from low
conversation and ideas, but now, that he brought this hat in and associated
his person with it, she shrank from him as if he had been a triple-hatted Jew,
peddling around the premises.
The obnoxious hat also exercised some exciting influence over Meshach
Milburn, if his changed manner could be ascribed to that article, for he

resumed his strong, wild-man's stare, deepened and lowered his voice, and
without waiting for any query or expression of his listener, told the tale.

Chapter IX.
HA! HA! THE WOOING ON'T.

It was twilight when Meshach Milburn closed his story, and silence and
pallid eve drew together in the Custis sitting-room, resembling the two
people there, thinking on matrimony, the one grave as conscious
serpenthood could make him, the other fluttering like the charmed bird.
Vesta spoke first:
"How intense must be your head to create so many objects around it within
the world of a hat! You have only brought the story down a little way
towards our times."
"I began the tale of Raleigh out of proportion," said Milburn, "and it grew
upon the same scale, like the passion I conceived for you so intensely at the
outset, that in the climax of this night I am scarcely begun."
"Yet, like Raleigh, I see the scaffold," said Vesta, with an attempt at humor
that for the first time broke her down, and she raised her hands to her face
to hush the burst of anguish. It would not be repressed, and one low cry,
deep with the sense of desertion and captivity, sounded through the
deepening room and smote Milburn's innermost heart. He obeyed an
impulse he had not felt since his mother died, starting towards Vesta and
throwing his arms around her, and drawing her to his breast.
"Honey, honey," he whispered, kissing her like a child, "don't cry now,
honey. It will break my heart."
The act of nature seldom is misinterpreted; Vesta, having labored so long
alone with this obdurate man, her young faculties of the head strained by
the first encounter beyond her strength, accepted the friendship of his
sympathy and contrition, as if he had been her father. In a few moments the
paroxysm of grief was past, and she disengaged his arms.

"You are not merciless," said Vesta. "Tell me what I must do! You have
broken my father down and he cannot come to my help. Take pity on my
inequality and advise me!"
"Alas! child," said Milburn, "my advice must be in my own interest, though
I wish I could find your confidence. I am a poor creature, and do not know
how. It is you who must encourage the faith I feel starting somewhere in
this room, like a chimney swallow that would fain fly out. Chirrup, chirrup
to it, and it may come!"
Standing a moment, trying to collect her thoughts and wholly failing, Vesta
accepted the confidence he held out to her with open arms. Blushing as she
had never blushed in her life, though he could not know it in the evening
dark, she walked to him and kissed him once.
"Will that encourage you to advise me like a friend?" she said.
"Alas! no," sighed Milburn fervently, "it makes me the more your unjust
lover. I cannot advise you away from me. Oh, let me plead for myself. I
love you!"
"Then what shall I do," exclaimed Vesta, in low tones, "if you are unable to
rise to the height of my friend, and my father is your slave? Do you think
God can bless your prosperity, when you are so hard with your debtor? On
me the full sacrifice falls, though I never was in your debt consciously, and
I have never to my remembrance wished injury to any one."
"Would you accept your father's independence at the expense of the most
despised man in Princess Anne?" Milburn spoke without changing his kind
tone. "Would you let me give him the fruit of many years of hard toil and
careful saving, in order that I shall be disappointed in the only motive of
assisting him—the honorable wooing of his daughter?"
She felt her pride rising.
"Your father's debts to me are tens of thousands of dollars," continued
Milburn. "Do you ask me to present that sum to you, and retire to my
loneliness out of this bright light of home and family, warmth and music,
that you have made? That is the test you put my love to: banishment from
you. Will you ask it?"

"I have not asked for your money, sir," said Vesta. "Yet I have heard of
Love doing as much as that, relieving the anguish of its object, and finding
sufficient joy in the self-denying deed."
"I do not think you personally know of any such case, though you may have
read it in a novel or tract. Men have died, and left a fortune they could no
longer keep, to some cherished lady; or they have made a considerable
sacrifice for a beautiful and noble woman; but where did you ever hear,
Miss Vesta, of a famished lover, surrendering every endowment that might
win the peerless one, to be himself returned to his sorrow, tortured still by
love, and by his neighbors ridiculed? What would Princess Anne say of me?
That I had been made a fool of, and hurl new epithets after my hat?"
Vesta searched her mind, thinking she must alight upon some such example
there, but none suited the case. Meshach took advantage of her silence:
"The gifts of a lover are everywhere steps to love, as I have understood. He
makes his impression with them; they are expected. Nothing creates
happiness like a gift, and it is an old saying that blessings await him who
gives, and also her who takes, and that to seek and ask and knock are
praiseworthy."
"Oh," said Vesta, "but to be bought, Mr. Milburn? To be weighed against a
father's debts—is it not degrading?"
"Not where such respect and cherishing as mine will be. Rather exalt
yourself as more valuable to a miser than his whole lendings, and greater
than all your father's losses as an equivalent, and even then putting your
husband in debt, being so much richer than his account."
"Where will be my share of love in this world, married so?" asked Vesta.
"To love is the globe itself to a woman, her youth the mere atmosphere
thereof, her widowhood the perfume of that extinguished star; and all my
mind has been alert to discover the image I shall serve, the bright youth
ready for me, looking on one after another to see if it might be he, and
suddenly you hold between me and my faith a paper with my father's
obligations, and say: 'Here is your fate; this is your whole romance; you are
foreclosed upon!' How are you to take a withered heart like that and find

glad companionship in it? No, you will be disappointed. It will recoil upon
me that I sold myself."
"The image you waited for may have come," said Milburn undauntedly,
"even in me; for love often springs from an ambush, nor can you prepare
the heart for it like a field. I recollect a fable I read of a god loving a
woman, and he burst upon her in a shower of gold; and what was that but a
rich man's wooing? We get gold to equalize nobility in women; beauty is
luxurious, and demands adornment and a rich setting; the richest man in
Princess Anne is not good enough for you, and the mere boys your mind has
been filled with are more unworthy of being your husband than the humble
creditor of your father. Such a creation as Miss Vesta required a special
sacrifice and success in the character of her husband. The annual life of this
peninsula could not match you, and a monster had to be raised to carry you
away."
"You are not exactly a monster," Vesta remarked, with natural compassion,
"and you compliment me so warmly that it relieves the strain of this
encounter a little. Do not draw a woman's attention to your defects, as she
might otherwise be charmed by your voice."
"That also is a part of my sacrifice," said Meshach, "like the money which I
have accumulated. Without a teacher, but love and hope, I have educated
myself to be fit to talk to you. It is all crude now, like a crow that I have
taught to speak, but encouragement will make me confident and saucy, and
you will forget my sable raiment—even my hat."
A chilliness seemed to attend this conclusion, and Vesta touched her bell.
Virgie, entering, took her mistress's instructions: "Bring a tray and tea, and
lights, and place Mr. Milburn's hat upon the rack!"
The girl glanced at the antique hat with a timid light in her eye, but her
mistress's head was turned as if to intimate that she must take it, though it
might be red-hot. Virgie obeyed, and soon brought in the tea.
"It is good tea," spoke Milburn, drinking not from the cup, but the saucer,
while Vesta observed him oddly, "and it is chill this evening. Let me start
your fire!"

He shivered a little as he stood up and walked across the room, and poking
the charred logs into a flame; and, setting on more wood, he made the walls
spring into yellow flashes, between which Vesta saw her forefathers dart
cold glances at her, in their gilt frames—yet how helpless they were, with
all their respectability, to take her body or her father's honor out of pawn!—
and she felt for the first time the hollowness of family power, except in the
ever-preserved mail of a solvent posterity. She also made a long, careful
survey of her suitor, to see if there was any apology for him as a husband.
His figure was short, but with strength and elasticity in it; better clothes
might fit him daintily, and Vesta re-dressed him in fancy with lavender kids
upon his small hands, a ring upon his long little finger, a carnelian seal and
a ribbon at his fob-pocket, and ruffles in his shirt-bosom. In place of his dull
cloth suit, she would give him a buff vest and pearl buttons with eyelet
rings, and white gaiters instead of those shabby green things over his feet,
and put upon his head a neat silk hat with narrow brim to raise his height
slenderly, and let a coat of olive or dark-blue, and trousers of the same
color, relieve his ornaments. Thus transformed, Vesta could conceive a
peculiar yet a passable man, whom a lady might grow considerate towards
by much praying and striving, and she wondered, now, how this man had
managed to soothe her already to that degree that she had voluntarily kissed
him. She would be afraid to do it again, but it was as clearly on record as
that she had once put a flower in his hat; and Vesta said to herself:
"He has power of some kind! That story, little as I heard of it, was told with
an opinionated confidence I wish my poor father had something of. Could I
ever be happy with this man, by study and piety? God might open the way,
but it seems closed to me now."
"The night wears on, Miss Custis," spoke Meshach. "Its rewards are already
great to me. When may I return?"
"I think we must determine what to do this night, Mr. Milburn," Vesta said,
with rising determination. "Not one point nearer have we come to any
solution of this obligation of my father. We have considered it up to this
time as my obligation, and that may have unduly encouraged you. Sir, I can
work for my living."
"You work?" repeated Milburn.

"Why not? I love my father. As other women who are left poor work for
their children or a sick husband, why should not I for him! Poverty has no
terrors but—but the loss of pride."
"You hazard that, whatever happens," said her suitor, "but you will not lose
it by evading the lesser evil for the greater. I have heard of women who fled
to poverty from dissatisfaction with a husband, but pride survived and made
poverty dreadful. Pride in either case increased the discontent. You should
take the step which will let pride be absorbed in duty, if not in love."
"Duty?" thought Vesta. "That is a reposeful word, better than Love. Mr.
Milburn," she said aloud, "how is it my duty to do what you ask?"
"I think I perceive that you have a loyal heart, a conscientiousness that
deceit cannot even approach. Something has already made you slow to
marriage, else, with your wonders, I would not have had the chance to be
now rejected by you. Marriage has become too formidable, perhaps, to you,
by the purity of your heart, the more so because you looked upon it to be
your destiny. It is your fate, but you contend against it. Look upon it, then,
as a duty, such as you expect in others—in your slave maid, for instance."
"Alas!" Vesta said, "she may marry freely. I am the slave."
"No, Miss Vesta, she has been free, but, sold among strangers with your
father's effects, will feel so perishing for sympathy and protection that love,
in whatever ugly form it comes, will be God's blessing to her poor heart.
What you repel in the revulsion of fortune—the yoke of a husband—
millions of women have bent to as if it was the very rainbow of promise set
in heaven."
"How do you know so much of women's trials, Mr. Milburn? Have you had
sisters, or other ladies to woo?"
"I have seen human nature in my little shop, not, like your rare nature,
refined by happy fortune and descent, but of moderate kind, and struggling
downward like a wounded eagle. They have come to me at first for cheaper
articles of necessity or smaller portions than other stores would sell, looking
on me with contempt. At last they have sacrificed their last slave, their last
pair of shoes, and, when it was too late, their false pride has surrendered to

shelter under a negro's hut, or dance barefooted in my store for a cup of
whiskey."
"Sir," exclaimed Vesta indignantly, rising from her rocker, "do you set this
warning for me?"
As she rose Meshach Milburn thought his wealth was merely pebbles and
shells to her perfection, now animated with a queen's spirit.
"Miss Vesta," he said, "pardon me, but I have just issued from many
generations of forest poverty, and knowing how hard it is to break that
thraldom, I would stop you from taking the first step towards it. The bloom
upon your cheek, the mould you are the product of without flaw, the chaste
lady's tastes and thoughts, and inborn strength and joy, are the work of
God's favor to your family for generations. That favor he continues in
laying those family burdens on another's shoulders, to spare you the toil and
care, anxiety and slow decay, that this violent change of circumstances
means. It would be a sin to relapse from this perfection to that penury."
"I cannot see that honorable poverty would make me less a woman,"
exclaimed Vesta.
"You do not dread poverty because you do not know it," Milburn continued.
"It grows in this region like the old field-pines and little oaks over a
neglected farm. Once there was a court-house settlement on Dividing
Creek, where justice, eloquence, talent, wit, and heroism made the social
centre of two counties, but they moved the court-house and the forest
speedily choked the spot. Now not an echo lingers of that former glory. You
can save your house from being swallowed up in the forest."
"By marrying the forest hero?" Vesta said, though she immediately
regretted it.
"Yes," Milburn uttered stubbornly, after a pause. "I have met the house of
Custis half-way. I am coming out of the woods as they are going in, unless
the sacrifice be mutual."
"Let us not be personal," Vesta pleaded, with her grace of sorrow; "I feel
that you are a kind man, at least to me, but a poor girl must make a struggle
for herself."

She saw the tears stand instantly in his eyes, and pressed her advantage:
"Your tears are like the springs we find here, so close under the flinty sand
that nobody would suspect them, but I have seen them trickle out. Tell me,
now, if I would not be happier to take up the burden of my father and
mother, and let us diminish and be frugal, instead of cowardly flying into
the protection of our creditor, by a union which the world, at least, would
pronounce mercenary. My father might come up again, in some way."
"No, Miss Vesta. Your father can hold no property while any portion of his
debts remains unpaid. The easier way is to show the world that our union is
not mercenary, by trying to love each other. Throughout the earth marriage
is the reparation of ruined families—the short path, and the most natural
one, too. Ruth was poor kin, but she turned from the harvest stubble that
made her beautiful feet bleed, to crawl to the feet of old Boaz and find
wifely rest, and her wisdom of choice we sing in the psalms of King David,
and hear in the proverbs of King Solomon, sons of her sons."
"I am not thinking of myself, God knows!" said Vesta. "Gladly could I teach
a little school, or be a governess somewhere, or, like our connection, the
mother of Washington, ride afield in my sun-bonnet and straw hat and
oversee the laborers."
"That never made General Washington, Miss Vesta. It was marriage that
lent him to the world; first, his half-brother's marriage with the Fairfaxes;
next, his own with Custis's rich widow. Had they been looking for natural
parts only, some Daniel Morgan or Ethan Allen would have been
Washington's commander."
"Why do you draw me to you by awakening the motive of my self-love?"
asked Vesta. "That is not the way to preserve my heart as you would have
it."
"In every way I can draw you to me," spoke Milburn, again trembling with
earnestness, "I feel desperate to try. If it is wrong, it arises from my sense of
self-preservation. Without you I am a dismal failure, and my labor in life is
thrown away."
"Do you really believe you love me? Is it not ambition of some kind;
perhaps a social ambition?"

"To marry a Custis?" Milburn exclaimed. "No, it is to marry you. I would
rather you were not a Custis."
"Ah! I see, sir;" Vesta's face flushed with some admiration for the man;
"you think your family name is quite as good. So you ought to do. Then you
love me from a passion?"
"Partly that," answered Milburn. "I love you from my whole temperament,
whatever it is; from the glow of youth and the reflection of manhood, from
appreciation of you, and from worship, also; from the eye and the mind. I
love you in the vision of domestic settlement, in the companionship of
thought, in the partition of my ambition, in my instinct for cultivation. I
love you, too, with the ardor of a lover, stronger than all, because I must
possess you to possess myself; because you kindle flame in me, and my
humanity of pity is trampled down by my humanity of desire; I cannot hear
your appeal to escape! I am deaf to sentiments of honor and courtesy, if
they let you slip me! Give yourself to me, and these better angels may
prevail, being perhaps accessory to the mighty instinct I obey at the
command of the Creator!"
As he proceeded, Vesta saw shine in Meshach Milburn's face the very
ecstacy of love. His dark, resinous eyes were like forest ponds flashing at
night under the torches of negro 'coon-hunters. His long lady's hands
trembled as he stretched them towards her to clasp her, and she saw upon
his brow and in his open nostril and firm mouth the presence of a will that
seldom fails, when exerted mightily, to reduce a woman's, and make her
recognize her lord.
Yet, with this strong excitement of mental and animal love, which generally
animates man to eloquence, if not to beauty, a weary something, nearly like
pain, marked the bold intruder, and a quiver, not like will and courage, went
through his frame. It was this which touched Vesta with the sense that
perhaps she was not the only sufferer there, and pity, which saves many a
lover when his merits could not win, brought the Judge's daughter to an
impulsive determination.
"Mr. Milburn," she said at last, pressing her hands to her head, "this day's
trials have been too much for my brain. Never, in all my life together, have I
had realities like these to contend with. I am worn out. Nay, sir, do not

touch me now!" He had tried to repeat his sympathetic overture, and pet her
in his arms. "Let us end this conflict at once. You say you will marry me;
when?"
"It is yours to say when, Miss Custis. I am ready any day."
"And you will give me every note and obligation of my father, so that my
mother's portion shall be returned to her in full, and this house, servants,
and demesnes be mine in my own right?"
"Yes," said Milburn; "I have such confidence in your truth and virtue that
you shall keep these papers from this moment until the marriage-day."
"It will not be long, then," Vesta said, looking at Milburn with a will and
authority fully equal to his own. "Will you take me to-night?"
"To-night?" he repeated. "Not to-night, surely?"
"To-night, or probably never."
He drew nearer, so as to look into her countenance by the strong firelight.
Calm courage, that would die, like Joan of Arc in the flames, met his
inquiry.
"Yes," said Milburn, "at your command I will take you to-night, though it is
a surprise to me."
He flinched a little, nevertheless, his conscience being uneasy, and the same
trembling Vesta had already observed went through his frame again.
"What will the world say to your marriage after a single day's acquaintance
with me?"
"Nothing," Vesta answered, "except that I am your wife. That will, at least,
silence advice and prevent intrusion. If I delay, these forebodings may
prevail, if not with me, with my family, some of whom are to be feared."
He seemed to have no curiosity on that subject, only saying:
"It is you, dear child, I am thinking of—whether this haste will not be
repented, or become a subject of reproach to yourself. To me it cannot be,
having no world, no tribe—only myself and you!"

Vesta came forward and lifted his hand, which was cold.
"I believe that you love me," she said. "I believe this hand has the lines of a
gentleman. Now, I will trust to you a family confidence. The troubles of this
house are like a fire which there is no other way of treating than to put it out
at once. My father will not be disturbed, beyond his secret pain, at the step I
am to take, for he appreciates your talents and success. It is for him I shall
take this step, if I take it at all, and I have yet an hour to reflect. But my
mother will be resentful, and her brothers and kindred in Baltimore will
express a savage rage, in the first place, at my father's losing her portion;
next to that, and I hope less bitterly, they will resent my marriage to you.
Exposed to their interference, I might be restrained from going to my
father's assistance; they might even force me away, and break our family
up, leaving father alone to encounter his miseries."
"I see," said Milburn; "you would give me the legal right to meet your
mother's excited people."
"Not that merely," Vesta said; "I would put it out of her power and theirs to
prevent the sacrifice I meditate making. My father's immediate dread is my
mother's upbraiding—that he has risked and lost her money. It has sent her
to bed already, sick and almost violent. I might as well save the poor
gentleman his whole distress, if I am to save him a part."
"Brave girl!" exclaimed Meshach Milburn, in admiration. "It is true, then,
that blood will tell. You intend to give your mother the money which has
been lost, and silence her complaint before she makes it?"
"Just that, Mr. Milburn, and to say, 'It is my husband's gift, and a peace-
offering from us all.'"
"Is it not your intention, honey," asked the creditor, "to take Mrs. Custis into
your confidence before this marriage?"
She looked at him with the entreaty of one in doubt, who would be
resolved. "Advise me," she said. "I want to do the best for all, and spare all
bitter words, which rankle so long. Is it necessary to tell my mother?"
"No. You are a free woman. I know your age—though I shall forget it by
and by." This first gleam of humor rather became his strange face. "If you

tell your father, it is enough."
"I hope I am doing right," Vesta said, "and now I shall take my hour to my
soul and my Saviour. Sir, do you ever pray?"
Milburn recoiled a little.
"I do not pray like you," he replied; "my prayers are dry things. I do say a
little rhyme over that my mother taught me in the forest."
"Try to pray for me to do right," said Vesta, "that I may not make this
sacrifice, and leave a wounded conscience. And now, sir, farewell. At nine
o'clock go to our church and wait. If I resolve to come, there you will find
the rector, and all the arrangements made. If I do not come, I think you will
see me no more."
"Oh, beautiful spirit," exclaimed her lover, "oppress me not with that fear!"
"If another way is made plain to me," Vesta said, "I shall go that way. If my
duty leads me to you again, you will be my master. Sir, though your errand
here was a severe one, I thank you for your sincerity and the kind
consideration you seem to have had for me so long. Farewell."
"Angel! Vesta! Honey!" Milburn cried, "may I kiss you?"
"Not now," she answered, cold as superiority, and interposing her hand.
The door stood wide open, and the slave-girl, Virgie, in it, holding the
Entailed Hat. Milburn, with a shudder, took it, and covered himself, and
departed.

Chapter X.
MASTER IN THE KITCHEN.

The kitchen had been a scene of anything but culinary peace and savor
during the long visit of the owner of the hat.
Aunt Hominy and the little darkeys had made three stolen visits to the hall
to peep at the dreadful thing hanging there, as if it were a trap of some kind,
liable to drop a spring and catch somebody, or to explode like a mortar or
torpedo. As hour after hour wore on, and Miss Vesta did not reappear, and
finally rang her bell for tea, Aunt Hominy was beside herself with
superstition.
"Honey," she exclaimed to Virgie, "jess you take in dis yer dried lizzer an'
dis cammermile, an' drap de lizzer in dat ole hat, an' sprinkle de flo' whar
ole Meshach sots wi' de cammermile, an' say 'Shoo!' Maybe it'll spile his
measurin' of Miss Vessy in."
"No, aunty, if old Meshach measured me in, I wouldn't make the family
ashamed before him. Miss Vessy is powerful wise, and maybe she'll get the
better of that wicked hat."
"Yes," said Roxy, "she's good, Aunt Hominy, an' says her prayers every
night and mornin'. I've heard tell that witches can't hear the Lord's name,
and stay, nohow. Maybe Miss Vessy'll say in Meshach's old hat: 'Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and John, bless the bed that I lie on.' That'll make the old devil
jess fly up an' away."
"No, gals," insisted Aunt Hominy, "cammermile is all dat'll keep him from
a-measurin' of us in. Don't ole Meshach go to church, too, and hab a prayer-
book an'—listen dar, honey! ef she ain't a singin' to him!"
As Virgie answered the bell, Aunt Hominy took down her cherished
camomile and sprinkled the little children, and gave them each a glass of
sassafras beer to bless their insides.

"Lord a bless 'em!" exclaimed the old lady, "ef de slave-buyer comes, Aunt
Hominy'll take 'em to de woods an' jess git los', an' live on teaberries,
slippery-ellum, haws, an' chincapins. We don't gwyn stay an' let ole
Meshach starve us like a lizzer."
"Aunt Hominy," said Roxy, "maybe, old lady, ef you bake a nice loaf of
Federal bread, or a game-pie, or a persimmon custard, an' send it to ole
Meshach, he won't sell us to the slave-buyers. He never gets nothing good
to eat, an' don't know what it is. A little taste of it'll make him want mo'."
"Roxy, gal," said Aunt Hominy, "I'd jess like to make a dumplin'-bag out o'
dat steeple-hat he got. When I skinned de dumplin' de hat would be bad
spiled, chillen, an' den de Judge would git his lan' back dat Meshach's
measured in. For de Judge would say, 'Meshach, ye hain't measured me fair.
Wha's yer yard-stick, ole debbil?' Den Meshach he say, 'De hat I tuk it in
wid, done gone burnt by dat ole Hominy, makin' of her puddin's.' 'Den,' says
de Judge, 'ye ain't measured me squar. I won't play. Take it all back!'
Chillen, we must git dat ar ole hat, or de slave-buyers done take us all."
They started to take another peep of cupidity and awe at the storied hat,
when Virgie emerged from the parlor door with the dreaded article in her
hand, and, hanging it on the peg, came with superstitious fear and relief into
the colonnade. Aunt Hominy hurried her to the kitchen, strewed her with
herb-dust, waved a rattle of snake's teeth in a pig's weazen over her head,
and ended by pushing a sweet piece of preserved watermelon-rind down her
throat.
"Did it hurt ye, honey?" inquired Aunt Hominy, with her eyes full of
excitement, referring to the hat.
"'Deed I don't know, aunty," Virgie answered; "all I saw was Miss Vessy,
looking away from me, as if she might be going to be ashamed of me, an' I
picked the thing up an' took it to the rack; an' all I know is, it smelled old,
like some of the old-clothes chests up in the garret, when we lift the lid and
peep in, an' it seems as if they were dead people's clothes."
The little negroes, Ned, Vince, and Phillis, heard this with shining eyes, and
dived their heads under Aunt Hominy's skirts and apron, while the old
woman exclaimed:

"De Lord a massy!" and began to blow what she called "pow-pow" on the
girl's profaned fingers.
"I don't believe it's anything, aunty, but an ugly, old, nasty, dead folks' hat,"
exclaimed Virgie. "He just wears it to plague people. He was drinking tea
just like Miss Vessy, but I thought his teeth chattered a little, as if he had
smelt of the old hat, and it give him a chill."
"Where did he get the hat, Aunt Hominy?" Roxy asked. "Did he dig it up
somewhere?"
The question seemed to spur the cook's easy invention, and, after a cunning
yet credulous look up and down the large kitchen, where the pale light at
the windows was invisible in the stronger fire beneath the great stack
chimney, Aunt Hominy whispered:
"He dug dat hat up in ole Rehoboff ruined churchyard. He foun' it in de
grave."
"But you said this afternoon, aunty, that the Bad Man gave it to him."
"De debbil met him right dar," insisted Aunt Hominy, "in dat ole obergrown
churchyard, whar de hymns ob God used to be raised befo' de debbil got it.
He says to Meshach: 'I make you de sexton hyar. Go git de spade out
yonder, whar de dead-house used to be, an' dig among de graves under de
myrtle-vines, an' fin' my hat. As long as ye keep de Lord an' de singin' away
from dis yer big forsaken church, you may keep dat hat to measure in
eberybody's lan'.' So nobody kin sing or pray in dat church. Nobody but
Meshach Milburn ever prays dar. He goes dar sometimes wid his Chrismas-
giff on he head, an' prays to de debbil."
Thus does an unwonted fashion arouse unwonted visions, as if it brought to
the present day the phantoms which were laid at rest with itself, and they
walked into simple minds, and produced superstition there.
Aunt Hominy never was stimulated to inventions of this kind, but she
immediately absorbed them, and they became religious beliefs with her. Her
manner, highly animated by her terror and belief, produced more and more
superstition in the minds of the girls and children, and the conversation fell
off,—the little negroes wandering hither and thither, unable to sleep, yet

unable to attract sufficient attention from any one, till Judge Custis, who
had been waiting for hours for his creditor to go, slipped down the back
stairs in his old slippers, and came to the kitchen among the colored people
for company's sake.
His fine presence, and familiar, if superior, address, put a new complexion
at once on the African end of the house.
He picked up all the children by twos or threes, woolled them, chased them,
tossed them, and drove the lurid images of Aunt Hominy's mind out of their
spirits, and then caught the two young girls, and set Roxy on his shoulder,
and caught Virgie by the waist, and finally piled them on Aunt Hominy,
who ran behind her biscuit-block, and he bunched all the children upon the
party.
"De Lord a massy, Judge!" exclaimed Aunt Hominy, delighted, and
showing her white teeth, whichever side she revealed. "Go 'long, Judge,
Missy Custis ketch you! Miss Vessy's a-comin', befor' de Lawd!"
The children were screaming, getting into the riot more, while pretending to
try to get out, invading the Judge's back, and rubbing their clean wool into
his whiskers, and the two neat servants, brought up like white children in
his family, were not unaccustomed to either jovial handling or petting from
their master, which he commonly concluded by a present of some kind.
"Old woman," said the Judge to Aunt Hominy, "can you give me a bit of
broiled something for my stomach? I want to eat it right here."
"Ha! yah! Don't got nothin' but a young chicken, marster! Mebbe I kin git
ye a squab outen de pigeon-house in de gable-yend."
"That's it, Hominy!" exclaimed Judge Custis; "a tender squab, a little toast
in cream, a glass of morning milk, and a bunch of fresh celery, will just
raise my pulse, and put courage into me. Get it, my faithful old girl; it's the
last I may ask of you, for old Samson Hat is going to own you next."
"Me? No, sah! I'll run away from Prencess Anne fust. De man dat cleans ole
Meshach Milburn's debbil hat sha'n't nebber hab me."

"Well, it'll be one of you. If you don't take Samson, Roxy must, or Virgie.
The old fellow will be very influential with our new master, and, Hominy,
we're all depending on you to make him so comfortable that he will just
keep the family together."
Sobriety came in on this attempted witticism, and the old cook saw a film
grow into the Judge's smiling eyes.
"Old marster!" she exclaimed, raising her hands, "you's jess a-sottin' dar, an'
breakin' your poor heart. Don't I know when you is a-makin' believe?
Mebbe dis night is de las' we'll ever see you in your own warm, nice
kitchen, an' never mo', dear ole marster, kin Hominy brile you a bird or
season de soup you like. Bless God, dis time we'll git de squab an' de celery
an' de toast, befo' ole Meshach Milburn measures all we got in!"
While the children crawled around the Judge's knees, setting up a dismal
wail to see him sob, the two neat house girls, forgetting every contingency
to themselves, sobbed also, like his own daughters, to see him unmanned;
but Aunt Hominy only felt desperately energetic at the chance to cook the
last supper of the Custis household.
She lighted a brand of pine in the fire, and started one of the stable boys up
a ladder by its light to ransack the pigeon-cote, and in a very little while
both a chicken and a bird were broiled and set upon the kitchen-table upon
a spotless cloth, and the plume of lily-white celery, and the smoking toast in
velvet cream, warmed the Judge's nostrils, and dried his tears.
Roxy stood behind him to wait upon his wishes; Virgie subdued every
expression of grief, and comforted the children, and poor Aunt Hominy,
with silent tears streaming down her cheeks to see him eat and suffer, kept
up a clatter of epicurean talk, lest he might turn and see her miserable. As
he finished his meal, and took out his gold tooth-pick, and felt a
comfortable joy of such misery and sympathy, Vesta opened the door, and
said:
"Papa!"
"My child?"
"Let me speak with you."

Judge Custis rose, and raised his hands to Aunt Hominy in speechless
recognition of her service; but not till the door closed behind him did the
old cook's cry burst through her quivering lips:
"Oh! chillen, chillen, he'll never eat no mo' like dat again. Ole Meshach's
measured him in!"

Chapter XI.
DYING PRIDE.

At the termination of Milburn's long visit, Vesta had gone to her own room,
and read her passage in the Bible, and said her prayer, and tried to think, but
the day's application had been too great to leave her mind its morning
energy, when health, which is so much of decision, was elastic in her veins
and brain.
She began to see her duty loom up like a prodigious thing on one side,
crowding every other consideration out of the way but one—her modesty;
and threatening that, which, like a little mouse, ran around and around her
mind, timorous, but helpless, and without a hole of escape.
She would cease to be a maid within the circuit of the clock, or forsake her
family, and drive that great bloodhound of duty over the threshold of her
ruined home.
In the one case lay outward devastation—the red eyes of parents and
servants who had not slept all night, and looked at her as their obdurate
hostage, and the prying constables lodged upon the premises to see that
nothing was smuggled out, the ring of the auctioneer's bell, and the
fingering of boors and old gossips over the cherished things of the family,
even to her heirlooms, jewelry, and hosiery; the vast old house a hollow
barn when these were done, and she and her mother visitors at the jail
where her poor father looked through the bars, and bent his head in shame!
Then the servants, one after another, mounted upon the court-house block,
the old gray servitors mocked, the little children parted, like calves by the
butcher, and the young girls feeling the desperate apprehensions of abuse
and violation, that were the other alternative to herself, with whom purity
was like the whiteness of the lily, prized more than its beauty of form or its
perfume.

She glanced in her mirror by the light that flamed in her brazen grate, and
saw the blushes climb like flying virgins at the sack of towns, up the white
ramparts of her neck and temples.
The form which had altered so little from childhood, supple and straight,
and moulded to perfection, was to fall like the young hickory-tree in the
August hurricane, twisted from its native grove. The breath of the man she
was to yield her life to, irresistible and hot as that storm, she had felt
already, when he held her for a moment in his arms in the transport of
passion, and heard his fearless avowal of desire.
To marry any man now seemed hard; to marry this one was inexpressible
shame, and at the thought of it she could not shed a tear, such paralysis
came over her. She had read of the recent Greek revolution, where elegant
ladies of Scio, and other isles of the Ægean Sea, educated in the best
seminaries of Europe, had been sold by thousands as common slaves in the
markets of Constantinople, and carried to their estates by brutal Turks, with
all the gloating anticipation of lust and tyranny.
On this vivid episode started a procession of all the ages of women who had
been the sport of conquest since their common mother, Eve, lost Paradise
by her simplicity: the Jewish maidens carried to Babylon, the Gothic virgins
dragged at the horse-tails of the Moors, the daughters of Palestine and
Byzantium consigned to Arab sensualists, and made to follow their nomadic
tents, and the almond-eyed damsels of China surrendered by their parents to
the wild Kalmucks, to be beaten and starved on every cold plain of Asia, till
life was laid down with neither hope nor fear.
"I am happier than millions of my sex," Vesta said; "my captor does not
despise me, at least. Perhaps he will treat me kinder than I think, and give
me time to draw towards him without this deadly pain and shame."
Then she almost repented of her hasty decision to marry this night, instead
of after longer acquaintance, which Mr. Milburn, no doubt, would have
granted, and his words were remembered with accusation: "What will the
world say to your marriage after a single day's acquaintance with me?"
"Will this haste not be repented, or become a subject of reproach to you?"
Was it too late to recall her words, and ask for delay?

"No," thought Vesta, "I am to keep, at least, my mind maiden and chaste,
instead of playing the unstable coquette with that. I will not let him begin to
think me weak and changeful already."
To see if there was the least glimmer of relief from this marriage Vesta
crossed to her mother's room, and found Mrs. Custis with her head wrapped
in handkerchiefs steeped in cologne, and a vial of laudanum in her hand,
and in a condition bordering on hysteria.
"Mamma," said poor Vesta, "are you in pain?"
"Oh!" screamed Mrs. Custis, "I am just dying here of cruelty and brutality.
Your father is a villain. I'll have that rascal, Milburn, killed. Go get me ink
and paper, daughter, and sit here and write me a letter to my brother, Allan
McLane, in Baltimore. He shall settle with Judge Custis for this robbery,
and take you and me back to Baltimore, leaving your father to go to the
almshouse or the jail, I don't care which."
"Mother," exclaimed Vesta, "what a sin! to abuse poor father now in all his
trouble!"
"Trouble!" echoed Mrs. Custis, mockingly, "what trouble has he had, I
would like to know? Living in the woods like a Turk among his barefooted
forest concubines! Spending my money, raked and scraped by my poor
father in the sugar importation, to make puddle iron out of the swamp, and
be considered a smart man! The family is broken up. We are paupers, and
now 'it is save yourself.' I'll take care of you if I can, but your father may
starve for any aid I will give him."
"Then he shall have the only aid in my power, mother," said Vesta,
decisively.
"Your aid!" Mrs. Custis exclaimed. "What have you got? Your jewels, I
suppose? How long will they keep him? You had better keep your jewels,
girl, for your wedding, and have it come quickly, for marriage is now your
only salvation."
"My last jewel shall go, then," Vesta said, with a pale resolution that darted
through her veins like ice.

"Save your jewels," Mrs. Custis continued, "and choose a husband before
this thing is noised abroad! You have a good large list to select from. There
is your cousin, Chase McLane, crazy for you, and with an estate in Kent.
There is that young fool Carroll, with thousands of acres on the western
shore, and the widower Hynson of King George, Virginia, with eighty
slaves and his stables full of race-horses. You can marry any of these
Dennis boys, or take Captain Ringgold of Frederick, who lives in elegance
at West Point, or be mistress of Tench Purvience's mansion on Monument
Square in Baltimore. All you have to do is to write a letter, saying: 'I expect
you,' or, what is better, take to-morrow's steamer for Baltimore and use your
Uncle Allan's house and become engaged and married there."
"Mamma," Vesta spoke without rebuke, only with a sad, confirmed feeling
of her destiny, "I could be capable of deceiving any of those gentlemen if I
could so heartlessly leave my father."
"Deceiving!" Mrs. Custis remarked, filling her palm and brow with the
cologne. "What is man's whole work with a woman but deceit? To court her
for her money, to kiss her into taking her money out of good mortgages and
putting it into bog iron ore? To tell her when past middle life that she has
nothing to live upon, except the charity of the public, or her reluctant
friends. All this for an experiment! The Custis family are all knaves or
fools. Your father is a monster."
Vesta went to her mother's side and bathed her forehead.
"Dear mamma," she said, "let you and I do something for ourselves, while
papa looks around and finds something to do. We can rent a house in
Princess Anne and open a seminary. I can teach French and music, you can
be the matron and do the correspondence and business, and if papa is at a
loss for larger occupation he can lecture on history and science. Our friends
will send their children to us, and we shall never be separated. I will give up
the thought of marriage and live for you two."
Mrs. Custis made a gesture of impatience.
"And be an old maid!" she blurted. "That is insufferable. What are all these
accomplishments and charms for but a husband, and what is he for but to
provide bread and clothes. Don't be as crazy as your unprincipled father!

Try no experiments! Drop philanthropy! Money is the foundation of all
respectability."
Vesta thought to herself: "Can that be so? Does it not, then, justify the man
who solicits me in his means of getting money? Mother"—Vesta spoke
—"you would have me marry, then?"
"There is no would about it," answered Mrs. Custis. "You must marry!"
"Marry immediately?"
"Yes, the sooner the better, to a rich man. Have you picked out one?"
"Give me your blessing, and I will try," Vesta said; "I think I know such a
one."
Mrs. Custis kissed her daughter, and moaned about her poor head and lost
marriage portion, and Vesta set out to look for her father.
She found him as described, in the luxury of tears and squab, as
comfortable among his negro servants as in the state legislature or at the
head of society, and they wrapped up in his condescension and misfortunes.
As Vesta saw the curious scene of such patriarchal democracy in the old
kitchen, she wondered if that voluptuous endowment of her father was not
the happy provision to make marriage unions tolerable, and social
revulsions philosophical. Something of regret that she had not more of the
animal faintly grew upon her sad smile when she considered that wherever
her father went he made welcome and warmth, as she already felt at the
picture of him, after parting with her apathetic mother.
"Roxy," said Vesta, as she left the kitchen, "do you go up to my mother and
stay with her all this night. Make your spread there beside her bed. Virgie,
put on your hood and carry a letter for me,—I will write it in the library."
She sat before her father, he too undecided to speak, and seeing by her fixed
expression that it was no time for loquacity. She sealed the letter with wax,
and, Virgie coming in, her father heard the direction she gave with curiosity
greater than his embarrassment:

"Take this to Rev. William Tilghman. Give it to him only, and see that he
reads it, Virgie, before you leave him. If he asks you any questions, tell him
please to do precisely what this note says, and, as he is my friend, not to
disappoint me."
The girl's steps were hardly out of hearing when Vesta opened the drawer of
the library-table and took out a package of papers tied with a string. She
unloosed it, and her father recognized from where he sat his notes of hand
and mortgages.
"Gracious God, my darling!" exclaimed Judge Custis, "how came you by
those papers?"
"They are to be mine to-night, father—in one hour. The moment they
become mine they will be yours."
"Why, Vessy," said the Judge, "if they are yours even to keep a minute, the
shortest way with them is up the chimney!"
He made a stride forward to take them from her hand. She laid them in her
lap and looked at him so calmly that he stopped.
"You may burn the house, papa," she said, "it is still your own. But these
papers you could only burn by a crime. It would be cheating an honorable
man."
"Honorable! Who?" the Judge exclaimed.
"He who is to be my husband."
"You marry Meshach Milburn!" shouted the Judge, "O curse of God!—not
him?"
"Yes, this night," answered Vesta; "I respect him. I hold these obligations by
his trust in me. They are my engagement ring."
Judge Custis raised a loud howl like a man into whom a nail is driven, and
fell at his daughter's feet and clasped her knees.
"This is to torture me," he cried; "he has not dared to ask you, Vesta?"

"Yes, and my word is passed, father. Shall that word, the word of a Custis,
be less than a Milburn's faith. By the love he bore me, Mr. Milburn gave me
these debts for my dower—a rare faith in one so prudent. If I do not marry
him, they will be given back to him this night."
"Then give them back, my child, and save your soul and your purity, lest I
live to be cursed with the sight of my noble daughter's shame? This
marriage will be unholy, and the censure to follow it will be the bankruptcy
of more than our estate—of our simple fame and old family respect. We
have friends left who would help us. If you marry Milburn, they will all
despise and repudiate us."
"I do not believe it," said Vesta. "The sense and courage of that gentleman
—he is a gentleman, for I have seen him, and a gentleman of many gifts—
will compel respect even where false pride and family pretension appear to
put him down. Who that underrates him will make any considerable
sacrifice to assist us? Your sons,—will they do it? Then by what right do
they decide my marriage choice? No, father, I only do my part to support
our house in its extremity, as these gentlemen and others have done before."
She pointed to the old portraits of Custises on the wall. If any of them
looked dissatisfied, he met a countenance haughty as his own.
"Vesta," her father called, "you know you do not love this man?"
Looking back a minute at the longing in his face, which now wore the
solicitude of personal affection, she melted under it.
"No, father," she said, with a burst of tears. "I love you."
She threw her arms around him and kissed him long and fondly, both
weeping together. He went into a fit of grief that admitted of no
conversation till it was partly spent, and at last lay with his gray hairs folded
to her heaving bosom, where the compensation of his love made her
sacrifice more precious.
"I feel that I am doing right, father," she said tenderly "Till now I have had
my doubts. No other young heart is wronged by my taking this step; I have
never been engaged, and it now seems providential, as I could not then have
gone to your assistance without injuring myself and another; and your debts

are too great for any but this man to settle them. Your life has been one long
sacrifice for me, and not a cloud has darkened above me till this day, giving
me the first shower of sorrow, which I trust will refresh my soul, and make
its humility grow. Oh, father, it would rejoice me so much if you could
respond to my sacrifice with a better life!"
"God help me, I will!" he sobbed.
"That is very comforting to me. I will not enumerate your omissions, dear
father, but if this important step in my life does not arrest some sad
tendencies I see in you, the disappointment may break me down.
Intemperance in you—a judge, a gentleman, a husband, and a father—is a
deformity worse than Mr. Milburn's honest, unfashionable hat. Do you not
feel happier that my husband is not to be a drunkard?"
"He has not that vice, thank God!" admitted the Judge.
"Be his better example, father, for I hope to see you influence him to be
kind to me, and the sight of you walking downward in his view will degrade
me more than bearing his name or sharing his eccentricities. Oh, if you love
me, let not your dear soul slide out of the knowledge of God!"
"Pray for me, dear child! My feet are slippery and my knees are weak."
"Begin from this moment to lean on Heaven," said Vesta. "It is better than
this world's consideration. Oh, what would strengthen me now but God's
approval, though I go into a captivity I dreamed not of. Even there I can
take my harp beneath the willows, like them in Babylon, and praise my
Maker."
She sat at her piano and sang the hymn the young consumptive, Rev. Mr.
Eastburn, composed in her grandmother's house, taking it from the
Episcopal collection:
"O holy, holy, holy Lord!
Bright in Thy deeds and in Thy name,
Forever be Thy name adored,
Thy glories let the world proclaim!

"O Jesus, Lamb once crucified

To take our load of sins away,
Thine be the hymn that rolls its tide
Along the realms of upper day!

"O Holy Spirit from above,
In streams of light and glory given,
Thou source of ecstacy and love,
Thy praises ring through earth and heaven!"
As her voice in almost supernatural clearness and sweetness filled the two
large rooms, and died away in melody, she rose and kissed her father again,
and said, "Courage, love! we shall be happy still."
A knock at the door and there entered the young clergyman she had sent for,
a sandy-haired, large-blue-eyed, boyish person, with a fair skin easily
freckled, and a look of youthful chivalry under his sincere Christian
humility.
"Good-evening, William," Vesta spoke; "I did not expect to see you till we
reached the church. But sit, and I will answer your questions. Father, you
are to go with me to the church—you and Virgie. Mr. Tilghman is to marry
us."
"Now, Vesta," spoke the young man, as her father left the room, "whom are
you going to marry, cousin, in such haste as this?"
"Did you have the church made ready, William, as I requested?"
"I did. The sexton is there now, lighting the fire."
"I thought you were loyal as ever, William, and depended upon you.
Thanks, dear friend! I am to marry Mr. Meshach Milburn at nine o'clock."
A cloud came over the young man's serene face, though his features
retained their habitual sweetness.
"I can marry you, cousin, even to Meshach Milburn," he said, "if that is
your wish. Why do you marry him?"
"It is not loyal in you to ask, William, but I will give you this answer: he
has asked me. He is also devoted and rich. To avoid excitement, possibly

some opposition, though it would be vain, we are to be married without
further notice, and papa is to give me away."
Silent for a moment, the young rector exclaimed:
"Cousin Vesta, have I lived to see you a mercenary woman? Has this man's
asserted wealth found you cold enough to want it, when love has been so
generously offered you by almost every young man of station in this region,
and from abroad—even by me?" he said, after a pause. "The scar is on my
heart yet, cousin. No, I will not believe such a thing of you. There is a
reason back of the fact."
"William, if you respected me as you once said you ever would, like your
sister, you would not add this night the weight of your doubt to my other
burdens, but take my hand with all the strength of yours, and lift me
onward."
"I will," said the rector, swallowing a dry spot in his throat. "Though it was
a bitter time I had when you refused me, cousin, the pain led me to my
vows at the altar where I minister, and I have had the assistance of your
beautiful music there, like the angel I seem to have seen reserved for me, in
place of you, sitting at your side. And I know that this marriage is, on your
part, pure as my sister's. No further will I inquire—what penalty you are
paying for another, what mystery I cannot pierce."
He raised his hands above her head: "The peace of God that passeth
understanding, abide with you, dear sister, forever!"
He went out with his eyes filled with tears, but hers were full of heavenly
light, feeling his benediction to be righteous.

Chapter XII.
PRINCESS ANNE FOLKS.

The Washington Tavern, or, rather, the brick sidewalk which came up to its
doors, and was the lounging-place for all the grown loiterers in Princess
Anne, had been in the greatest activity all that Saturday afternoon, since it
was reported by Jack Wonnell, who set himself to be a spy on Meshach's
errand, that the steeple-hat had disappeared in the broad mansion of Judge
Daniel Custis.
Jack Wonnell had a worn bell-crown on his head, exposed to all kinds of
weather, as he was in the habit of fishing in these beaver-hats, and never
owned an umbrella in his life. He lived near Meshach, in the old part of
Princess Anne, near the bridge, and was the subject of the money-lender's
scorn and contempt, as tending to make a mutual eccentricity ridiculous.
Milburn had been willing to be hated for his hat, but Jack Wonnell made all
unseasonable hats laughable, the more so that he was nearly as old a wearer
of his bell-crowns as Milburn of the steeple-top. Although he had no such
reasons of reverence and stern consistency as his rich neighbor, he seemed
to have, in his own mind, and in plain people's, a better defence for
violating the standard taste of dress.
The people said that Jack Wonnell, being a poor man, could not buy all the
fashions, and was merely wearing out a bargain; that he knew he was
ridiculous, and set no such conceit on his absurdity as that grim Milburn;
and they rather enjoyed his playing the Dromio to that Antipholus, and
turning into farce the comedy of Meshach's error.
Jack Wonnell had partly embraced his bargain by the example of Meshach.
A frivolous, unambitious, childish fellow, amusing people, obliging people,
running errands, driving stage, gardening, fishing, playing with the lads,
courting poor white bound girls, incontinent, inoffensive, he had been
impelled to bid off his lot of old hats by Jimmy Phœbus saying:

"Jack, dirt cheap! Last you all your life! Better hats than old Meshach
Milburn's. You'll drive his'n out of town."
To his infinite amusement and dignity, his appearance in the bell-crown hats
attracted the severe regard of Milburn, and set the little town on a grin. The
joke went on till Jimmy Phœbus, Judge Custis, and some others prompted
Jack Wonnell, with the promise of a gallon of whiskey, to ask Meshach to
trade the steeple-top for the bell-crown. The intense look of outrage and
hate, with the accompanying menace his townsman returned, really
frightened Jack, and he had prudently avoided Milburn ever since, while
keeping as close a watch upon his movements and whereabouts as upon
some incited bull-dog, liable to appear anywhere.
In this way Jack Wonnell had followed Meshach to the court-house corner,
where stood Judge Custis's brick bank—which, of late, had done little
discounting—and, from the open space between it and the court-house in its
rear, he peeped after Milburn up the main cross street, called Prince William
Street, which stopped right at Judge Custis's gate. There, in the quiet of
early afternoon, he heard the knocker sound, saw the door open, and beheld
the Entailed Hat disappear in the great doorway. Then, scarcely believing
himself, Wonnell ran back to the tavern, and exclaimed:
"May I be struck stone dead ef ole Meshach ain't gwyn in to the Jedge's!"
"You're a liar!" said Jimmy Phœbus, promptly, catching Jack by the back of
the neck, and pushing his bell-crown down till it mashed over his nose and
eyes, "What do you mean by tellin' a splurge like that?"
"I seen him, Jimmy," was the bell-crowned hero's smothered cry; "if I
didn't, hope I may die!"
"What did he go there for?"
"I can't tell, Jimmy, to save my life!"
"Whoo-oo-p!" cried Phœbus, waving his old straw hat, itself nearly out of
season. "If this is a lie, Jack Wonnell, I'll make you eat a raw fish. Levin"—
to Levin Dennis—"you slip up by Custis's, and see if ole Meshach hain't
passed around the fence, or dropped along Church Street and hid in the

graveyard, where he sometimes goes. I'll stay yer, and make Jack Wonnell
account for sech lyin'!"
Levin Dennis, a boyish, curly-haired, graceful-going orphan, walked up the
cross street, passing Church lane and the Back alley, and slowly turned the
long front of Teackle Hall, and went out the parallel street towards the
lower bridge on the Deil's Island road, till he could turn and see the three
great-chimneyed buildings of Teackle Hall lifting their gables and
lightning-rods to his sight in their reverse, the partly stripped trees allowing
that manorial pile to stand forth in much of its length and imposing
proportions. Lest he might not be suspected of curiosity, Levin continued on
to the bridge at Manokin landing, and counted the geese come out of a lawn
on a willowy cape there, and take to water like a fleet of white schooners.
He ascended the rise beyond the bridge, and looked over to see if Meshach
might have taken a walk down the road. Then returning, he swept the back
view of Princess Anne, from the low bluff of cedars on another inhabited
cape on the right, which bordered the Manokin marshes, to the vale of the
little river at the left, as it descended between Meshach's storehouse and the
ancient Presbyterian church of the Head of Manokin, seated among its
gravestones between its hitching-stalls and its respectable parsonage manse.
Nothing was visible of the owner of the distinguishing hat.
So Levin Dennis returned more slowly around the north wing of Teackle
Hall, looking at every window, as if Meshach might be there; but nothing
did he see except the dog, which, to Levin's eye, appeared uneasy, and ran
out of the gate to make friends with him.
"So, Turk!" Dennis muttered, patting the dog's head, "no wonder you're
scared, boy, to see old Meshach Milburn come in."
Teackle Hall, according to rumor, was built at the close of the revolutionary
war by an uncle, or grand-uncle, of Judge Custis, who came from Virginia,
somewhere between Accomac and Northampton counties, and went into
shipbuilding on the Manokin, adding some privateering and banking, too,
and once, going abroad, he brought back from some ducal residence the
plan of Teackle Hall, as Judge Custis found it on his coming into the
property.

It was nearly two hundred feet in length, and would have made three
respectable churches, standing in line, with their sharp gables to the front,
the bold wings connected with the bolder centre by habitable curtains or
colonnades, in which panels of slate or grained stone made an attic story
above the lines of windows, and lintels and sills of the same stone, with
high keystones, capped every window in the many-sided surface of the
whole stately block, all built of brick brought over in vessels from the
western shore, or possibly from the North, or Europe, and painted a gray
stone color.
Its central gable had deep carved eaves, and a pediment-base to shed rain,
and a large circular window in that pediment. The two mighty chimneys of
that centre were parallel with the ridge of the roof, and rose nearly from the
middle of the two opposite slopes, bespeaking four great fireplaces below,
and a flat, low-galleried observatory upon the roof gave views of portions
of the bay on clear days.
The wings of Teackle Hall had similar, but lower, chimneys, astraddle of
their roofs, and forest trees—oak, gum, holly, and pine, with a great willow,
and some tawny cedars, and bushes of rose and lilac—dotted the grassy
lawn. The Virginia creeper and wild ivy climbed here and there to the upper
windows, and a tall, broad, panelled doorway, opening on a low, open
portico platform with steps, seemed to say to visitors: "Men of port and
consideration come in this way, but inferiors enter by some of the smaller
doors!"
Levin Dennis, who had never sounded that knocker, though he had often
taken his terrapins to the kitchen, stared in concern at the door where it was
reported Meshach Milburn had gone in, and would hardly have been
surprised if that intruder had now appeared at one of the three deep
windows over the door with a firebrand in his hand.
Levin muttered to himself: "Rich folks, I reckon, must make a trade. Maybe
it's hosses—maybe not. I know it ain't hats."
He then turned down to the Episcopal Church, only a square from Teackle
Hall, and on a street between it and the main street, though in a retired
situation, its front turned from the town, and looking over the fields and

farms, like a good pastor who is warming at the fire with his hands behind
him.
A single-storied, long, low edifice of British bricks, with its semicircular
choir next the street, and, adjoining the choir, a spire of more modern
brickwork built up to an open bell cupola, and open ribbed dome, also of
brick, tipped with a gilded cross, the ivy was greenly matted all round the
choir, and ran along the side of the church, where Levin Dennis walked
under four tall, round-topped windows of stained and wired glass, till he
came to the end gable or front of the church, standing in unworldly
contemplation of the graveyard and the back fields.
There, since the Stamp Act Congress, or when Princess Anne was not half a
century old, the old church had taken its stand, backed up to the town,
recluse from its gossip. Between its tall round doors, with little window-
panes like spectacles let into their panels, the ivy vine arose in form like the
print of The Crucified, reaching out its stems and tendrils wide of the one
glorified window in the gable, in whose red dyes glimmered the triumph of
a bloody countenance. The mossy walls, often scraped, the mossified
pavement, the greenish tombs of marble under the maples and firs, showed
the effect of shade, solitude, and humidity upon all things of brick in this
climate, where wood was already rising into favor as building material, but
to the detraction of picturesqueness and all the appearance of antiquity.
No sign of the unpopular townsman was to be seen anywhere, but, as Levin
Dennis peeked around the foliage in the yard he beheld a man he had never
observed before, and of a tall, bearded, suspicious, and ruffianly exterior,
lying flat on the top of a memorial vault, with his head and feet half
concealed in some cedar brambles.
"Hallo!" Dennis shouted.
"What do you hallo for?" spoke the man; "don't you never come to a
churchyard to git yer sins forgive?"
"No," said the terrapin-finder, "not till I knows I has some sins."
"What air you prowlin' about the church then fur, anyhow?" demanded the
stranger, standing up in his boots, into which his trousers were tucked; and

he stood such a straight, long-limbed, lithe giant of a man that Levin saw he
could never run away, even if the intruder meant to chew him up right there.
"I ain't a prowlin', friend," answered Levin Dennis. "I was jess a lookin'."
"Lookin' fur what, fur which, fur who?" said the man, taking a step towards
Dennis, who felt himself to be no bigger than one of the other's long, ditch-
leaping, good-for-wading legs.
"Why, I was jess a follerin' a man—that is, friend, not 'zackly a man, but a
hat."
"A hat?" The man walked up to Dennis this time, and stood over him like a
pine-tree over a sucker. "Yer's yer hat," pulling an old straw article, over-
worn, from Dennis's head. "No wind's a blowin' to blow hats into
graveyards. Or did you set yer hat under a hen in yere, by a stiffy?"
Dennis looked up, laughing, though not all at ease, but his amiable want of
either intelligence or fear, which belong near together, made his most
natural reply to the pertinacious intruder a disarming grin.
"No, man," Dennis said, "it was a hat on a man's head—ole Meshach
Milburn's steeple-top. I was a follerin' of him."
"Stow your wid!" the man clapped the hat back on Levin's head. "You're a
poor hobb, anyhow. Is thair any niggers to sell hereby?"
"Oh, that's your trade, nigger buyin'? Well, there's mighty few niggers to
sell in Prencess Anne. Unless"—here a flash of intelligence shone in Levin's
eyes—"unless that's what's took ole Meshach Milburn to Jedge Custis's. He
goes nowhar unless there's trouble or money for him."
"And where is Judge Custis's, you rum chub?"
"Yander!" pointing to Teackle Hall.
"Ha! that is a Judge's? And niggers? Broke, too! Well, it's no hank for a
napper bloke. So bingavast! Git! Whar's the tavern?"
"I'm a-goin' right thair," answered Levin, much relieved. "You must be a
Yankee, or some other furriner, sir."

"No, hobb! I'm workin' my lay back to Delaware from Norfolk, by pungy to
Somers's cove. Show me to the tavern and I'll sluice your gob. I'll treat you
to swig."
At the prospect of a drink, of which he was too fond, Levin led the way to
the Washington Tavern, where there was a material addition to the
attendance since Jimmy Phœbus had called to every passer-by that Meshach
Milburn, on the testimony of Jack Wonnell, had actually been and gone and
disappeared in Judge Custis's doorway, and nearly a dozen townsfolks were
now discussing the why and wherefore, when, suddenly, Levin Dennis
came out of Church Street with a man over six feet high, of a prodigious
pair of legs, and arms nearly as long, with a cold, challenging, yet restless
pair of blue eyes, and with reddish-brown beard and hair, coarse and
stringy. The free negro, Samson Hat, being a little way off, was observed to
cast a beaming glance of admiration at the athletic proportions of the
stranger, who looked as if he might shoulder an ox, or outrun a horse.
"Hallo!" exclaimed Jimmy Phœbus, looking the stranger over boldly, yet
with indifference, at last. "You're cuttin' a splurge, Levin, too. Where's
Meshach?"
"Can't see no sign of him, Jimmy. Guess Jack Wonnell hit it, an' he's gone in
the Jedge's. Mebbe he's buyin' of Jedge Custis's niggers. That's this
gentleman's business."
Jimmy Phœbus, himself no slight specimen of a man, gave another glance
at the stranger from the black cherries of his eyes, and, apparently no better
satisfied with the inspection, made no sign of acquaintance.
"Whoever ain't too nice to drink with a nigger buyer," said the man,
independently, "can come in and set up his drink, with my redge, for I'm
rhino-fat and just rotten with flush."
There was a pause for somebody to take the initiative, but Jimmy Phœbus,
turning his big, broad Greekish face and small forehead on the stranger,
remarked:
"I never tuk a drink with a nigger buyer yit, and, by smoke! I reckon I'm too
old to begin."

The man stopped and measured Jimmy up in his eye.
"Humph!" he said with a sneer, "you look to be a little more than half
nigger yourself. If I was dead broke I'd run you to market an' git my price
for you."
"No doubt of it whatever, as fur as you're concerned," said Jimmy,
unexcited, while the man pushed Levin Dennis in towards the bar.
Either the new movement of Meshach Milburn, or the example of the
strange man, set Princess Anne in a tipsy condition that day. The stranger
was full of money, and treating indiscriminately, and the pavement before
the hotel was continually beset with the loiterers, and the bar took money
and spread mischief. So when, an hour after dark, the unpopular townsman,
avoiding the crowd, passed by on the opposite side of the street, nearest his
own lodging, one of the loudest and most unanimous yells he had ever
heard in his experience, rang out from the Washington Tavern.
"Steeple-top! Steeple-top! Old Meshach's loose. Whoo-o-op!"
"Laugh on!" thought Meshach, "till now I never knew the meaning of 'let
them laugh who win.'"
He felt confirmed in his idea to be married in the Raleigh tile, and when he
saw Samson Hat, Milburn said: "Boy, brush all my clothing well. Then go
back to the livery stable, and order a buggy to be ready for you at ten
o'clock. At that hour set out for Berlin; and bring back Rhody Holland with
you in the morning."
"It's more dan thirty mile, marster, an' a sandy road."
"No matter. Take it slow. I will write you a letter to carry. Samson, I am
going to be married to-night to the rose of Princess Anne."
"Dar's on'y one," said Samson. "Not Miss Vesty Custis?"
"Yes, Samson. Princess Anne may now have something to howl at. The
poor girl may be lonesome, as, no doubt, she will be dropped everywhere
on my account, and not a soul can I think of, to be my young lady's maid,
unless it is Rhody."

"Yes, Marster, wid all your money you're pore in friends; in women-friends
you is starved."
"You may go with me to the church," said Meshach, "I suppose you want to
see me married."
"Yes, sir. Dat I do! Wouldn't miss dat fo' my Christmas gift. I 'spect dat gal
Virgie will come wid Miss Vesty to de cer'mony, marster."
"Perhaps so. You are not thinking of love, too, Samson?"
"Well, don't know, marster. Virgie's a fine gal, sho' I am a little old, Marster
Milburn, but I'll have to look out for myseff, I 'spec, now you done burnt
down my spreein' place. Dar's a wife comin' in yar now. So if you don't
speak a good word fur me wid some o' Miss Vesty's gals, I'm aboot done."
"Well, boy," Meshach said, "you have got the same chance I had: the upper
hand. I owe you a nice little sum in wages, and you may be able to buy one
of the Custis housemaids, and set her free, and marry her, or, be her owner.
You are a free man."
Samson shook his head gravely.
"Dat won't do among niggers," he said. "Niggers never kin play de upper
hand in love, like white people. Dey has to do it by love itseff: by kindness,
marster."
Before nine o'clock Milburn and his negro left the old store by the town
bridge, and passing by the river lane called Front Street, into Church Street,
walked back of the hotel, avoiding its triflers, and reached the church in a
few minutes unobserved. The long windows shed some light, however, but
as it was Saturday night, this was attributed, by the few who noticed it, to
preparations for the next Sabbath morning. Before setting out, Samson Hat,
observing his employer to shake a trifle, asked him if a dram of whiskey
would not be proper.
"No, boy; this is a wedding without wine. I shall need all my wits to find
my manners."
He entered the church, and found it warmed, and the minister already
present in his surplice, kneeling alone at the altar. Mr. Tilghman arose, with

his youthful face very pale, and tears upon his cheeks, and seeing his
neglected parishioner and the serving-man, came down the aisle.
"Mr. Milburn," he said, extending his hand, "I hope to congratulate, after
this ceremony, a Christian-hearted bridegroom, and one who will take the
rare charge which has fallen to him, in tender keeping. My endeavor shall
be to love you, sir, if you will let me! Miss Vesta is the priestess of Princess
Anne, and if you take her from our sight and hearing, even God's
ministrations in this church will seem hollow, I fear."
"To me they would," said Milburn, "though from no disrespect to our
pastor."
"You have been a faithful parishioner," resumed Tilghman, "during my brief
labor here, as in my boyhood, when I little dreamed I should fill that desk.
You know, perhaps, that it was from the hopeless love of my cousin Custis,
I fled to God for consolation, and he made me his humble minister."
"I have heard so," said Milburn; "or, rather, I have seen so."
"Pardon my mentioning a subject so irrelevant to you, sir, but, though I
have surrendered every vain emotion for my cousin, her happiness is a part
of my religion, and this sudden conclusion of her marriage, about which I
have asked only one question, has urged me to throw myself upon your
sympathy."
"What do you ask, William Tilghman? No matter—your request is granted."
"How have I won your favor?" the young rector asked, somewhat surprised.
Milburn mechanically picked his hat from a pew, and held it a little way up.
"You were the only boy in this village who never cried after this hat."
"Then it was probably overlooked by me. I was like the other boys,
mischievous, before my spirits had been depressed by unhappy love, and I
did not know I was any exception to their habits."
"It was grateful to see that exception," said Milburn; "hooted people make
fine distinctions."

"Oh, Mr. Milburn, forgive the boys! They are made for laughter, and little
causes excite it, like dogs to bark, from health and exercise—scarcely more
than that. The request I make is to let me be your friend, because I have
been your wife's! Frankness becomes my calling, and I think you need
friendly, cordial surroundings to bring out your usefulness, and give you the
freedom that will take constraint out of your family life, and, without
diminishing your good sensibilities, dispel any morbid ones. This will open
a way for Vesta to see her domestic career, which, otherwise, might become
so rapidly contracted as to disappoint you both. You have seen her the idol
of her wide circle, free as a bird, indulged by her kind, and by Providence
also, till joy and grace, beauty and health, faith and hope live abundant in
her, and you are the beneficiary of it all. Her society hereafter you must
control. May I become your friend, and let my love for your wife
recommend me to your confidence, as you to mine and to my prayers?"
"Have I another friend already?" exclaimed Milburn, his voice quivering.
"What wealth she brings me never known before! William, you will be ever
welcome to me."
They clasped hands upon it, and old Samson Hat, sitting back, was heard to
chuckle aloud such a warming laugh, that Meshach's response to it, in a
sudden pallid shivering, seemed slightly out of keeping. He was recalled,
however, by the entrance of Judge Custis with his daughter, and her maid,
Virgie.
Vesta was very pale, but neither shrinking nor negative. On the contrary, she
supported her father rather than received his support, and Milburn saw the
Judge's worn, helpless face, with the pride faded from it, and pity for his
daughter absorbing every other feeling of depression.
He wore his best cloth suit, with the coat tails falling to his knees behind,
the body cut square to the hips, and the collar raised high upon his stock of
white enamelled English leather. His low-buttoned vest exposed his shirt-
buttons of crystal and gilt, and a ruffle, ironed by Roxy's slender hands with
nimble touches, parted down the middle like sea foam on shell, and similar
ruffles at the wrists were clasped by chain buttons of pearl and silver. His
vest was of figured Marseilles stuff, and gaiters of the same material partly
covered his shoes; and his heavy seal, with his coat of arms upon it, fell

from a pale ribbon at his fob. Debtor though he was, and answering at the
bar of the church to a heavy personal and family judgment, his large and
flowing lines of body, deeply cut chin, full eyes, and natural height and
grace of stature made him a marked and noble presence anywhere.
Vesta Custis, dropping off a mantle of blue velvet at a touch of her maid,
stood in a party dress of white silk, the neck, shoulders, and arms bare; and,
as she halted a minute in the aisle, Virgie struck the cloth sandals from her
mistress's white slippers of silk, and, removing her hood of home-
embroidered cloth, a veil of white fell to her train. The dingy light from the
lamps of whale-oil gathered, like poor folks' children's marvelling eyes,
around the pair of diamonds in her delicately moulded, but alert and
generous ears. Her fine gold watch-chain, twice dependent from her neck,
disappeared in the snowy mould of her bosom, on whose heaving drift
swam a magnolia-bud and blossom, each with a leaf. Her father's picture, in
a careful miniature set in pearls, lay higher on her breast, fastened by a
pearl necklace. Her hands were covered with white gloves, and her arms
were without ornament. Her hair, dropping in dark ringlets around her
forehead and temples, was combed upward farther back, and then gathered
around a pearl comb in high braids, and the plentiful loops drooped to her
shoulder.
Milburn glanced at the treasures of her peerless bodily charms, never till
now revealed to his sight, and their splendor almost made him afraid.
Never had he been at a theatre, a ball, or anywhere from which he could
have foreseen a swan-like neck and bosom sculptured like these, and arms
as white as the limbs of the silver-maple, and warmed with bridal-life and
modesty.
Her lips, parted and red, her great rich eyes a goddess might have
commanded through, with their eyebrows of raven-black, like entrances to
the caves of the Cumæan sibyl, her small head borne as easily upon her
neck as a dove upon a sprig—all flashed upon Milburn's thrilled yet
flinching soul, as the revelation of a divinity.
As she stepped forward he spoke to her with that bold instinct or ecstasy
she had observed when she first addressed him in her father's house, ten
hours before.

"You have dressed yourself for me?" he said.
"Sir, such as I could command upon this necessity I thought to do you
honor with."
"For me, to look so beautiful! what can I say? You are very lovely!"
"It is gracious of you to praise me. Shall we wait, or are you ready?"
He gave her his hand, unable to speak again, and she was calm enough to
notice that his hand was now hot, as if he had fever. Her father, at her side,
reached out also, and took the bridegroom's other hand:
"Milburn," he said, huskily, "this is no work of mine. My daughter has my
consent only because it is her will."
"The nobler to me for that," Milburn spoke, with his countenance strangely
flushed. "What shall we do, my lady?"
"Give me your arm; not that one. This is right. Have you brought a ring,
sir?"
"Yes." He drew from his vest pocket a little, lean gold ring, worth hardly
half a dollar.
"It was my poor mother's," he said.
Without another word she walked forward, her arm drawing him on, Virgie
following, and her father bringing up the rear. Samson Hat, feeling uneasy
at being awarded no part in the ceremony, slipped up the aisle as far as the
big, stiff-aproned stove in the middle of the church, behind which he
ducked his body, but kept his head and faculties in the centre of the events.
Mr. Tilghman had preceded them in his surplice, and taking his place at the
altar, with his countenance pale as death, he read the exordium in an altered
voice: "Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here, and in the face of
this company, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony."
"What 'company' is here?" thought Vesta. "Not alone these poor negroes
and my father; no, I feel behind me, looking on, the generations of our pride
and helpless ease, the worthy younger suitors I have been too exacting and

particular to see the consideration and merits of, the golden hours I might
have improved my mind in, with brilliant opportunities I was not jealous of,
and which will be mine no more, because I had not trimmed my virgin
lamp; and so I slept away my girlhood, till now I awaken at the cry, 'The
bridegroom cometh,' and I behold! Yes, I have been a foolish virgin, and am
surprised when my fate is here! Perhaps my guardian angel also stands
behind me, the cross advanced that I must take, my crown concealed; but
somewhere, midway of this journey of life, she may give it to me, and say,
'Well done!'"
"This 'company,'" thought Milburn, with swimming head, "gathered to see
me marry! what company? I seem to feel, besides these negroes, my sole
spectators, the populous forest peering on, the barefoot generations, the
illiterate broods, the instinctive parents, the sandy graves. They give forth
my lost tribe, and all cry at me, 'Go, leave us, proud one! despiser, go!' Yet
there is one I see, pure as my bride, white as my captive's bosom, her soul
all in her believing eyes, and saying, 'Oh, my son, it is a woman like me that
has come into your life, and her heart is very tender, and, by your mother's
dying love! be kind to the poor stranger you have bought.'"
He answered, "I will!" aloud, and it seemed almost a miraculous
coincidence that it was a response to the minister's question, till he heard
the corresponding inquiry put to his bride in the clergyman's low, but
gentlest, tones:
"Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honor, and keep him, in sickness
and in health; and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him, so long as
ye both shall live?"
"I will!" spoke the Judge's daughter, clear as music, and the Judge drew a
long, deep sigh, saturated with tears, as if from the deepest wells of grief.
He could not distinctly answer, as he joined her hand to the minister's. The
minister lost his office and speech for a moment, joining her hand to the
bridegroom's. The slave-girl burst into a wail she could not control, and
only Vesta stood calm as her bridegroom, putting her cool, moist hand in his
palm of fire, and waited to repeat the Church's deliberate language.

When both had made this solemn promise, she reached for the little ring,
and gave it to her old lover, the minister, and Virgie loosed her glove. Mr.
Tilghman, his tears silently falling upon his book, passed the ring to
Meshach, and saw its tiny circle hoop her white finger round, no bigger
than a straw, yet formidable as the martyr's chain. His prayers were said
with deep feeling, and he pronounced them man and wife. Then, shaking
Meshach's hand, he said, with his boyish countenance bright as faith could
make it:
"My friend, may I take my kiss?"
Meshach nodded his head, but his face was like a ball of fire, and he hardly
knew what was asked. Mr. Tilghman kissed Vesta, saying,
"Cousin, your husband is my friend, and love and friendship both surround
you now. May your happiness be, like your goodness, securest when you
surmount difficulties, like those birds that cannot float at perfect grace till
they have struggled above the clouds."
"May I kiss you now?" Milburn said, gazing with a wild look upon her rich
eyes.
As she obediently raised her lips, a strange, warm, husky breath, not natural
nor even passionate, came from his nostrils. The Judge, looking at this—no
pleasing scene to him, the fairest Custis in two hundred years being
devoured before his sight—exclaimed within his soul,
"Is Meshach drinking? His eyes look fiery."
So, after kissing his daughter also, and saying, "May God reward you with
triumphs and compensation beyond our fears!" the Judge said:
"Milburn, I suppose, in the sudden conclusion of this union, you have made
no arrangements as to where you will go; so come, of course, to Teackle
Hall, and make it your home."
"Is that your wish, my dear one?"
Vesta replied, "Yes. But it is yours to choose, sir."

"You have some business with your father for an hour," Milburn said;
"meantime, I require something at my warehouse, and, as it is yet early in
the night, may I leave you a little while?"
She bowed her head again, and, while they proceeded towards the church-
door, lingering there, Samson took the opportunity to seize both of Virgie's
hands.
"Virgie," he exclaimed, "is all dat kissin a gwyin on an' we black folks git
none of it? Come hyeah, purty gal, an' kiss yer ole gran'fadder!"
Virgie consented without resistance, till Samson continued, "Oh, what
peach an' honey, Virgie! Gi me anoder one! I say, Virgie, sence my marster
an' your mistis have done gone an' leff us two orphans, sposen we git Mr.
Tilghman to pernounce us man an' wife, too?" Then Virgie drew away.
"Samson Hat," she said, "what's that you are talking about? You ought to be
ashamed of yourself. You are old enough to be my father!"
"'Deed I ain't, my love. I'm good as four o' dese new kine o' Somoset
County beaux. I'm a free man. Maybe I'll sot you free too, Virgie—me an'
my marster yonder. He says we better git married. 'Deed he does."
"You are just an impertinent old negro," the girl replied. "Do you suppose
any well-raised girl would have a man who got rich by cleaning the Bad
Man's hat? You're nothing but the devil's serving-man, sir."
"Look out dat debbil don't ketch you, den," said Samson. "You pore,
foolish, believin' chile! Look out dem purty black eyes don't cry for ole
Samson yit. He's done bound to marry some spring chicken, ole Samson is,
an' I reckon you'll brile de tenderest, Virgie."
Virgie, indignant, but fluttered at her first real proposal, and from one of the
richest men of her color in Princess Anne, hastened to tie on her young
mistress's walking-shoes, and, as they all stepped from the happy old
church, where Vesta's voice had so often pierced, in her flights of harmony,
to a bliss that seemed to carry her soul, like a lark, to heaven's gate, that
"singing, still dost soar, and, soaring, ever singest,"

she saw fall upon the pavement of the churchyard the long, preposterous,
moon-thrown hat of the bridegroom.
"Oh, what will he do with that hat, now that he has married me?" Vesta
thought. "Will he continue to afflict me with it?"
Her heart sank down, so that she felt relieved when he kissed her again at
the church-gate, and saying, "I will come soon, darling," went, with his
man, into Princess Anne.
"Is your buggy ready harnessed, Samson?" his master asked, when they
turned the court-house corner.
"Yes, marster."
At this moment a large crowd of men, comprising all the idle population in
town, as well as many Saturday-night bacchanalians from the country and
coasts, some standing before the tavern, others on the opposite sidewalks or
gathered on the court-house corner, seeing the hatted figure of Meshach rise
against the moonlight, raised the scattering cry, finally deepening into a
yell, of:
"Man with the hat loose! Steeple-top! Three cheers for old Meshach's hat!"
With a minute's irresolution, as if hesitating to go through the crowd,
Milburn turned into the main street, crossed it, and continued down the
opposite sidewalk, on the same side with his domicile, the jeers and jests
still continuing.
"Dar's rum a workin' in dis town all arternoon, marster," his faithful negro
said, "eber sence dat long man come in from de churchyard wid Levin
Dennis. Look out, marster!"
He had scarcely spoken, when three men were seen to bar the way, two of
them drunk, the third ugly with drink, emerging from a groggery that stood
across the street from the tavern, where further beverage had been denied
them. The first was Jack Wonnell. He hiccoughed, cried "Steeple-top!" and
slunk behind a mulberry-tree. The second man was Levin Dennis, hardly
able to stand, and he sat down on the groggery step, smiling up idiotically.

The third man, rising like a giant out of his boots, with his arms swaying
like loose grapevines, and his bearded face streaked with tobacco drippings,
looking insolence and contempt, brought the flat of one hand fairly down on
the crown of Milburn's surprising tile, with the words:
"Halloo! Yer's Goosecap! Hocus that cady, Old Gripefist!"
The hat, age being against it, wilted down on Meshach's eyes, and the
heedless stroke, unconsciously powerful, staggered him.
Samson, who had drunk in the giant's qualifications with an instant's
admiration, immediately drew off, seeing his master insulted, and struck the
tall stranger a blow with his fist. The man reeled, rallied, and sought to
grapple with Samson. That skilful pugilist bent his knees, slided his
shoulders back, and, avoiding the clutch, raised, and threw his trunk
forward, with the blow studied well, and planted his knuckles in the white
man's eyes. The tall ruffian went down as from a bolt of lightning.
Milburn saw all this happen in a minute of time, and his eye, looking for
something to defend himself, dropped on the brick pier under the groggery
steps, where Levin Dennis sat, stupefied by the scene. A brick in the pier
was loose, and Milburn stepped towards it. In this small interval the hardy
stranger had recovered himself and staggered to his feet, and had drawn a
dirk-knife.
"The ruffian oly you!" he bellowed. "Knocked down! by a nigger, too! Hell
have you, then!"
As he darted forward, he described a rapid circle backward and downward
with the knife, aiming to turn it through Samson's bowels, which he would
have done—that valorous servant being without defence, and not so much
as a pebble of stone lying on the bare plain of the soil to give him aid—had
not Meshach, wresting the loose brick from the pier, aimed it at the
corresponding exposed portion of the assassin's body, and struck him full in
the pit of the stomach. The man's eyes rolled, and he fell, like one stone-
dead, his dirk sticking in the sidewalk.
"Let him lie there," said Meshach, contemptuously. "No danger of such a
dog dying! If there is time he shall mend in the jail. Take to your buggy,
boy, and keep out of the way."

The negro needed no warning, as the impiety of striking a white man was
forbidden in a larger book than the Bible—the book of ignorance. He
disappeared through the houses and was a mile out of Princess Anne,
driving fast, before the new man had raised his head from the ground.
"Where is the nigger?" he gasped, his paleface painted by his bloodshot
eyes. "What kind of coves are you to let a black bloke fight a white man?
I'll cut his heart out before I tip the town."
He looked around on the crew which had crossed over from the tavern;
Meshach had vanished in his store at the descent of the road. Jimmy
Phœbus was the only one to speak.
"Nigger buyer," he said, "if you are around this town from now till
midnight, or after midnight to-morrer, Sunday night, ole Meshach Milburn
will have you in that air jail till Spring. By smoke! he'll find out yer aunty's
cedents, whair you goin, whair you been, what's yer splurge, an all yer
hokey pokey. You've struck the Ark of the Lord this time—ole Milburn's
Entailed Hat! Take my advice an' travel!"
The man washed his face at the tavern pump, turned the bank corner, and
disappeared in the night towards Teackle Hall.

Chapter XIII.
SHADOW OF THE TILE.

As Vesta and her father stepped over the sill of Teackle Hall, it seemed very
dear, yet somewhat dread to them, being reclaimed again, but at the penalty
of a new member of the family and he an intruder. To the library Vesta and
her father went, and he threw some wood upon the low fire, and lighted the
lamp and candles; then turning, he took his daughter in his arms and sobbed
bitterly, repeating over the words: "What shall I do! O what shall I do!" She
also yielded to the luxury of grief, but was speechless till he said:
"My darling, I have dreamed of your wedding-day many a time, but it was
not like this. Music and joy, free-heartedness, a handsome, youthful
bridegroom, our whole connection gathered here from the army and navy,
from South, West, and North, and all happy except poor Daniel Custis,
about to lose his child!"
"Your child is not to go," Vesta whispered; "is not that a comfort?"
"I do not know. Is it my pure, poor child? Had I seen you waste with
consumption, day by day, like a dying lilac-tree, with its clusters fewer
every year till it deadened to the root, I could have wept in heavenly
sympathy, and learned from you the way I have not walked. But, in your
flower to be a forester's plucking, stripped from my stem and trodden in the
sand, your pride reduced, your tastes unheeded, your heart dragged into the
wigwam of a savage and made to consult his maudlin will—— Oh, what
shall I do!"
"I do not fear my husband like that," Vesta said, opening his arms. "My
mind, I think, he will rather raise to serious things, for which I have some
desire, though, I fear, no talent. Papa, something tells me that this old life
we have led, easy and happy, comfortable and independent, is passing away.
Our family race must learn the new lessons of the age if we would not see it
retired and obscure. Is that not so?"

"I fear it is God's truth, my darling. The life we have led is only a remnant
of colonial, or, rather, of provincial dignity, to which the nature of this
republican government is hostile. Tobacco, which was once our money, is
disappearing from this shore, and wheat and corn we cannot grow like the
rich young West, which is pouring them out through the canal the late
Governor Clinton lived to open. Money is becoming a thing and not merely
a name, and it captures every other thing—land, distinction, talent, family,
even beauty and purity. The man you married understands the art of money
and we do not."
"Then are we not impostors, papa, if we assume to be so much better than
our real superiors? Surely we must persevere in those things the age
demands, and excel in them, to sustain our pride."
"Yes, if the breed is gamecock it will accept any challenge, not only war
and politics, but mechanics, shop-keeping, cattle-herding, anything!"
"Papa, if you can see these things that are to be, so clearly, why can you not
take the wise steps to plant your family on the safe side?"
"Ah! we Virginians were always the best statesmen, but we died poor.
Having no manual craft, slight bookkeeping, and unlimited capacity for
office, we foresaw everything but the humiliation of ourselves, and that we
hardly admitted when it had come, so much were we flattered by our
philosophic intellects. Our newest amusement is to expound the constitution
to them who are doing too well under it, although our fathers, who made it,
like Jefferson and Madison, died only yesterday, overwhelmed with debts,
and poor Mr. Monroe is run away to New York, they say, to dodge the
Virginia bailiffs."
"Well, papa, I have saved you from that fear. Here are your notes to Mr.
Milburn and others. Sit down and look them over carefully and see if they
are all here!"
He took them up, with volatile relief laughing on his yet tear-marked face,
and said:
"We'll burn them, Vessy."

"Nay, sir, not till you have seen them all. A single note missing would give
you the same perplexity, and there is no daughter left to settle it."
He looked at her with a smile, yet annoyance.
"You are not going to make a Meshach Milburn of me?"
"Stop, sir!" Vesta said. "You might do worse than learn from my husband."
Something strange in her expression baffled the Judge.
"Ha!" he interjected, "have I a rival already, daughter? Is his conquest as
complete as that?"
"I promised to honor him a few moments ago, and I believe I can, papa. All
that you tell me adds to my respect for a man who seems to be only what he
is."
"Perhaps you can love him, too?" the Judge said, watching her with an
apprehension a little like wonder, a little like jealousy.
"Oh, I wish I could, papa! That also I promised to do, and I will try. But my
work will all be a failure if you do not become reconciled to Mr. Milburn. It
was for you I married him, and to save your name, your peace, your
independence, and the upbraiding we expected from mamma at the loss of
her dower. He is now your son-in-law, still in the prime of life, with the
business training you lament that you do not possess. Begin this moment,
papa, and learn his habits. Count and identify those notes!"
Judge Custis looked them over separately, ran the number of notes he had
given over in his mind, and said:
"Yes, he has made fair restitution. There are none missing."
"Restitution implies that he has robbed you, papa. A just man did not speak
there! Every penny in those debts is stamped with Mr. Milburn's injuries
and coined by his sacrifices. Have you spent his money remembering that?"
"No, my child, I suppose not."
"Give me the notes, papa."

She took them and sat thinking a few moments silently.
"If I were a man, papa," she said at length, "I would try to learn business
sense. It must be so respectable to live with one's mind able to help one's
security and one's friends, and prepare for age or sickness while strong and
healthy. Now, I think I will not let you burn these notes till you have paid
the price of them! Please write a transfer of this house, servants, and your
manor to me, Vesta——yes, Vesta Milburn!"
She blushed as she spoke for the first time her new-worn name.
"Alas!" sighed her father, "Vesta Custis no more. I begin to feel it. Well,
Mrs. Milburn—I will give you the title—for what must I make over these
old properties to you?"
"In consideration of my repayment of the sum of my mother's estate to you
for her, for which you have given her no security whatever. It is not
provided for by these notes. I have only Mr. Meshach Milburn's promise
that he will pay her this money, risked and lost by you, father, I fear very
heedlessly. Is it restitution, also, for Mr. Milburn to strip himself to pay your
debts to mother?"
"No," said the Judge, guiltily, "that he pays on account of his passion for
you. He may cheat you there."
"I do not believe it, because he has been faithful to me so many years before
I knew he loved me. A man who keeps himself pure for a woman he has no
vows to, will pay her father's debts of honor when he has promised."
Judge Custis found the issue quite too warm for his convenience, and
blushing as much as Vesta, he sat down and drew up a conveyance of his
property to Vesta Milburn, in her own right, and in consideration of twenty-
five thousand dollars, paid to Mrs. Lucy Custis on account of judgment
confessed to her by Daniel Custis.
"There, my dear," he said, passing it over, "what do you want with it? Are
you not sure of a home here as long as you live, even with me as the
proprietor?"

"No. The tragedy nearly finished here may be repeated, papa, and all of us
be homeless if you can go in debt again. I shall not do that—not even for
my husband, and here will stand Teackle Hall to protect you all from the
cold if bad times ever come again."
"You have paid a greater price for it, my child, than it is worth, and you are
entitled to it."
"Besides, dear father, if Mr. Milburn needs any reminder of his promise to
repay mamma's dowry, this will give it. He intended his gift to be my
marriage dower, and were I to convey it to you I should first ask his
consent; not in law, perhaps, but in delicacy."
"Oh, yes," the Judge said carelessly, "I am glad you have such good
reasons. Yet, my beautiful, my last child,—pride of my race! I hate to see
you so ready for this business—this calculation and foresight. It is not like
the Custises. I fear this man, Milburn, in a single day has thrown his net
around your nature, and annexed you to his sordid existence. At this
moment the redeeming thing about you is that you cannot love him."
"Dear father, thoughts like that beset me, too—the pride of aristocracy, the
remembrance of what has been; but I want to be honest and not to cheat my
heart or any person. We have fallen from our height; he has raised himself
from his condition; and there is no deception in my conduct. He knows I do
not love him. Instead of standing upon an obdurate heart, I pray God to melt
my nature and mould it to his affection!"
Regarding her a moment with increasing interest, Judge Custis came
forward and kissed her forehead.
"Amen, then!" he said. "May you love your husband! I will do all I can to
love him, too."
"That is spoken like a true man," Vesta said. "And now, father, good-night!
Be ready here for Mr. Milburn's arrival. Ring for a decanter and some cake.
It will not hurt you, after your fast, to drink a glass of sherry with the
bridegroom."
He kissed her and felt her trembling in his arms. As she started to go, she
returned and clung to him again. Her face was pale with fear.

"Oh, dreadful God!" he muttered, "to visit my many sins upon this spotless
angel! Where shall I fly?"
A step was upon the porch, and Vesta flashed up the stairway.
Judge Custis went to his door apprehensive and in tears. A strange man
stood there, with his eye bruised and blood dripping down to his coarse,
rope-like beard. He was in liquor, but so pale that it was apparent by the
starlight.
"Good-evening," said the man; "you don't know me, Judge Custis? No
matter, I'm Joe Johnson."
The Judge, whose tears had taken him far from things of trivial memory,
looked at the man and repeated "Joe Johnson. Not Joe Johnson of
Dorchester?"
"Yes, Judge, Joe Johnson, the slave-dealer. I've bought many a nigger from
a Custis when it was impolite to sell 'em, Judge, so they let me run' em off,
and cussed me for it to the public. An' that's made me onpopular, Judge
Custis, and that's my fix to-night."
"You have been fighting, Johnson, I think," said the Judge, with suppressed
dislike.
"I've been knocked down by a nigger," said the man, with a glare of
ferocity, removing his hand from the wounded eye, as if it inflamed his
recollection of the blow to see the drops of blood drip from his beard to the
porch. "This town is too nice to abide a dealer in the constitutional article,
and so they set on me, when I was a little jingle-brained with lush, an' while
the nigger klemmed me in the peep, a little white villain with a steeple
bonnet hit me in the bread-bag with a stone. I've come yer, Judge, to lie up
in the kitchen, an' sleep warm over Sunday, for the cops threaten to take me,
if they catch me before midnight."
"I suppose you know, Johnson, that I am a magistrate, and the proper
harborage I give to breakers of the peace is the jail."
"I'm not afraid of that limbo, Judge Custis, when I come to you. Old Patty
Cannon has done you many a good turn with Joe Johnson's gang about

election times in the upper destreeks of Somerset. Patty always said Judge
Custis was a game gentleman that returned a favor."
The Judge's countenance, an instant blank, lighted up with all a vote-getter's
smile, and he said:
"Joe, you're a terrible fellow, but dear old Aunt Patty did always take my
part! I suspect, Joe, that you have run afoul of Samson, the hired man of
Meshach Milburn, who is a boxer, though I wonder that he could get away
with your youth and size. Of course, I won't let you come to harm. You
haven't been playing your tricks on anybody's negroes, Joe?"
"No, upon my word, Judge! You see, I took a load of Egypt down the
Nanticoke to Norfolk, and shipped 'em to Orleens. Says I: 'I'll go back
Eastern Shore way, and see if there's any niggers to git.' So I tramped it
from Somers's Cove to Princess Anne, an' sluiced my gob at Kingston and
the Trappe till I felt noddy with the booze, and lay down in the churchyard
to snooze it off. Bein' awaked before my nod was out, I felt evil an'
chiveyish, and the tavern blokes, an' the nigger, an' the feller with the
steeple shap, all clecked me at once."
"Well, Joe, for Aunt Patty's sake, I'll take care of you. Go to the kitchen
door, and I'll step through the house and tell our Aunt Hominy to give you
supper and breakfast, and a place to get some sleep. But you must keep out
of the way, and slip off quietly on Sunday, for we have had a wedding in the
family to-day, Joe, and though I cannot understand your peculiar slang, I
suspect the bridegroom to be the man who knocked the breath out of you
with the stone."
The stranger lifted his hand from his bloody eye again, and counted the red
drops splashing down from his beard. Judge Custis marked his scowl.
"Tut, tut!" said the Judge, "you will never get your revenge out of that man.
He is too strong. I don't wonder that he disabled you, and don't you ever get
into his clutches, Joe; for if he knows you are here, I shall be forced to send
you to jail this very night. Keep out of the hands of Meshach Milburn! He
has knocked the breath out of you, Mr. Johnson, but there are some whose
hearts he has twisted out of their bodies."

"I'll meet him somewhere," Joe Johnson muttered, "but not in Princess
Anne;" and he pulled down his slouched hat to cover his eyes, and stalked
away to find the kitchen.
"Oh, what a day can bring forth," Judge Custis thought, raising his hands to
the October stars: "Meshach of the ominous hat the host in my parlor: Joe
Johnson, the son-in-law of Patty Cannon, the guest of my kitchen!"

Chapter XIV.
MESHACH'S HOME.

Vesta had slept she hardly knew how long, but it was day, and slowly her
eyes turned towards the remainder of her bed to see if it was occupied.
The bridegroom was not there.
She reached her foot into her slipper at the bedside, and at one swift step
passed before her mirror, whispering:
"I have dreamed it all!"
The fresh, flushing skin, and radiant contrasts of hair and eyes seemed so
welcome to her in their perfect assurance of health, that she whispered
again:
"Have I dreamed it? He is not here. Oh, am I free?"
Then a feeling of reproval came to her as the minutest memory of that
wonderful yesterday rose to her mind, and the vow she had made to honor
and obey seemed to have been too easily repented. She looked upon her
hand, and the little, thin, pathetic thread of gold reaffirmed her memory of
the wedding-ring, and at the next suggestion a blush coursed through her
being like a redbird in the apple-blossoms: perhaps he had stolen from her
chamber stealthily as he came, while she, drowned in deep slumber, wotted
not.
A glance into the mirror again revealed those blushes repeating each other,
like the Aurora in the northern dawn, till, with a searching consciousness,
and her voice raised above the whisper, she said,
"Be still, silly girl!"
Opening the door, she found Virgie lying on the rug without, warmly
wrapped in her mistress's blanket-shawl, but wide awake.

"Virgie, no one has passed?" asked Vesta.
"No, Miss Vessy. Nobody could have stepped over me, for my mind has
been too awake, if I did sleep a little. Maybe he ain't a-coming, Miss Vessy.
Maybe he's ashamed!"
"Hush, Virgie," Vesta said, "you are speaking of your master."
Throwing her morning-robe around her shoulders, the maiden bride tripped
noiselessly to her mother's apartment; the door was open, the night taper
floating in its vase, and Mrs. Custis lay asleep with her bank-book under her
pillow.
"Shall I awake her?" Vesta thought. "Yes, if I do not need her experience, I
do want her confidence, and not to give her mine would seem deceit now."
Vesta kissed her mother softly, and placed her cheek beside that lady's thin,
respectable profile as she awoke, and said:
"Daughter, mercy! why, what has become of you? It seems to me I have
seen nobody for days, and I wanted to express my indignation even in my
dreams. Where have you been?"
"Oh, mamma," Vesta said, taking Mrs. Custis's head in her arms, "I have
been finding your lost fortune, which troubled us all so much. It is to be
given back to you, dearest—my husband has promised to do so."
"Your husband? Whom have you selected, that he is so free with his
money? How could you hear from Baltimore so soon? Now, don't tell me a
parcel of stuff, thinking to comfort me. Your father is a villain, and my
connections shall know it."
Mrs. Custis drew her bank-book from under her head, and began to cry, as
she took a single look at its former total.
"Darling mamma," Vesta said, "seeing you so miserable yesterday on
account of papa's failure, and your portion gone with it, I accepted an offer
of marriage, and have a rich man's promise that, first of all, your part shall
be paid to you. This house, and our manor, and everything as it is—the
servants, the stable, and the movables—belong to me, in my own name,
paid for in papa's notes, and by him transferred to me to be our home

forever, so that a revulsion like yesterday may not again cross the sill of our
door. Does not that deserve a kiss, mamma?"
"I don't believe a word of it," said Mrs. Custis. "This is another trick to
deceive me. I don't accuse you of it, Vesta, but you are the victim of
somebody and your father. Now, who can this man be, so free with his
ready money? It's not the style in Baltimore to promise so liberally as all
that. Have you accepted young Carroll?"
"No, nor thought of him, mamma."
"Then it must be that widower fool, Hynson, ready to sell his negroes for a
second wife like you."
"He has neither been here in body or mind," Vesta said; "never in my
mind."
"That would be a marriage to make a talk: it wouldn't be like you to bestow
so much beauty on a widower. I think there is a certain vulgarity about an
elegant girl marrying a widower. She is so refined, and he is generally so
sleek and sensual. Did you hear from Charles McLane?"
"Nothing, mamma; let me ease your mind by telling you that my husband
lives here in Princess Anne. He was father's creditor, Mr. Meshach Milburn.
He has loved me unknown for years. I saw a way to stop all scandal and
recrimination by marrying him at once, that the society we know would
have but one, and not two, subjects of curiosity. Papa saw me married last
night to Mr. Milburn, and I bear his name this Sabbath day."
"His wife? Meshach Milburn? The vulgarian in the play-actor's hat? That
man! Daughter, you play with my poor head. It is going again. Oh-h-h!"
"Mother, it is true. I am Mrs. Milburn. My husband is your benefactor."
It was unnecessary to say more, for Mrs. Custis had really fainted.
"Poor mother!" thought Vesta, "I am confirmed in my fear that, if she had
been told of my purpose, she would have opposed it bitterly."
Roxy was summoned to assist Vesta, and after Mrs. Custis had become
conscious, and sighed and cried hysterically, her daughter, sitting in her

lady's rocker, spoke out plainly:
"Mother, I appreciate your disappointment in my marriage, though I should
be the one to make complaint and receive sympathy, instead of
discouragement; but I do not desire it; indeed, I will not permit any person
to disparage my husband, or draw odious comparisons between my poverty
and his exertions. If there are in my body, or my society, any merits to
please a man, they have fallen to him under the law of Providence, that he
that hath shall receive. I pity your illness, dear mamma, but I fear Mr.
Milburn is ill, too, for he has not been here all night, though he left me at
the church-gate."
"I hope the viper is dead!" Mrs. Custis said, with great clearness, and
energized it by sitting up in bed. Roxy left the room.
"I hope he has been murdered," said Mrs. Custis, "and that the murderer
will never be discovered. If there is any spirit of the McLanes left in my
brothers and nephews, they will wipe out, in blood, the insult of this
marriage between my daughter and the man who set a trap upon the honor
of a respectable family."
Vesta arose with a pale, troubled face, yet with some of her mother's
prejudice flashing back.
"He can defend himself, mamma. I shall go to seek him now, since he is so
much hated for me."
She returned to her room, and put on a walking-suit, and made her toilet. In
the library Vesta found her father dozing in a large chair, with his feet upon
a leather sofa, and a silk handkerchief drawn across his crown, under which
were the dry beds of tears that had coursed down his cheeks. She saw, with
a touch of joy, that the sherry in the decanter was untouched, and the two
glasses were still clean: he had not relapsed into his habits, even while
making an all-night vigil to wait for the unwelcome son-in-law. He started
as she entered, and then stared at her between his dazed wits and a mute
inquiry that she could understand.
"He has not come, papa. And mamma—oh! she is severe."

Vesta, trembling at the throat a moment, rushed into her father's wide-open
arms, and buried the sob in his breast.
"Poor soul! Poor lamb! Poor thing!" he said, over and over, while his
temper slowly rose, that seldom rose of recent years, since pleasure and
carelessness had taken its masculine sting away, but Vesta felt his tones
change while he petted her, and at last heard him say, hoarsely:
"By God!"
"Sh—h!" she whispered, raising her hand to his mouth.
"I will kill somebody," he went on, finishing his sentence, and as she drew
away he strode across the room and back again, a noble exhibition of
passion that had a noble origin, in fatherly pity.
"Don't lose your true pride, papa, after you have persevered so long," Vesta
said. "It is Sunday. Do you think he will come? What can have happened?"
"He will either come or fight me," Judge Custis remarked. "I have tried to
be a peaceable man and Christian magistrate, albeit a poor hypocrite in
some, things, but I am pushed too far. My wife's smallness is worse than
insanity and wickedness put together. Between her and this money-broking
fiend, and my neglected child entrapped into such a marriage, by God! I
will clean my old duelling arms, and appeal to injustice itself to set me
even."
If he had been fine-looking in his sincere grief, he was thrice more
attractive in his sincere high spirit. Vesta, admiring him in spite of her cares,
did not like to see him in this unnatural recklessness.
"Dear father," she said, soothingly, "you have no cause of quarrel."
"I have every cause," he cried; "the proposal to marry you was an insult, for
which I should have challenged him, and shot him if he declined. Now he
has married you and absconded, using you and the Custis honor with
contempt. In my day I was the best shot in Eastern Virginia. I can kill a man
in this cause as easily as I have broken either of a man's arms, at choice, in
my courting days. Public opinion will clear me under this provocation, and
I can acquit my own conscience, abhorrent as duelling is to me. My sons-in-

law would leap to take the quarrel up, and rid the world of Meshach
Milburn."
"That is mamma's idea, to kill the debtor who has been specially kind to her.
She says she will send for Uncle Allan McLane, and is more unreasonable
than ever. Papa, your feelings are unjust. Something we do not know of has
happened to Mr. Milburn. He was not himself all the while at the church.
Now that I recollect, he was not ardent for the marriage to be so soon. It
was I who hastened the hour. Let us be right in everything, having
progressed so far with the recovery of our fortunes, and let us await the
fulfilment of events hopefully."
"Milburn was drunk at the ceremony, I saw that," Judge Custis said, "but it
was no excuse. In fact, what good can come of this violent alliance? It
seems to me that we have leaped from the frying-pan into the fire. I feel
ugly, my daughter, and there is no concealing it."
"Then you are in the mood to talk to mother this morning," Vesta said,
"while you have some unusual will and spirit. This resentful sullenness she
is showing I fear more than your passing emotion, papa. Be firm, yet kind,
with her, and I will go to find my husband. Yes, that is my place. He may be
more justly complaining of my absence now, than we of his neglect."
"You don't mean that you are going to visit him at his den?"
"I shall go there first. It would have been my home last night if he had
required it. To tell the truth," Vesta said, blushing, "the poor man was so
kind to me yesterday, in spite of his object, and so quaint, and, as it seemed,
dependent on me, that my charity is enlisted for him, and I could almost
have married him from pity."
The Judge's temper fell a little in the study of his daughter's blushing.
"Wonderful! wonderful!" he thought to himself; "that poor corn-bred fellow
has already made more impression on this girl's pride than a hundred
cavalier gallants. Truly, we are a republic, Vesta," he continued aloud, "and
you lay down the Custis character as easily as our old connection, Lord
Fairfax, accepted the democracy of his hired surveyor, Mr. Washington,
before he died."

"I laid down the Custis name yesterday," Vesta said, "though not their better
character, I hope. Papa, there is only one law of marriage; it is where the
wife follows the husband."
She looked a little archly at him, wiping her eyes of recent tears, and though
she may not have meant it, he was reminded of his own fear of his wife.
Aunt Hominy now came in, having been told by Virgie to prepare coffee,
and she followed Roxy, who brought it into the library. The old cook had a
strange look, as of one who had been up all night at a fire, or a "protracted
meeting," and she poked her head in as if afraid to come farther, till Vesta
went out and kissed her kindly.
"Poor Aunty Hominy! did you think I was sold, or abused, because I had
been married? Dear old aunty, I shall never leave you!"
Aunt Hominy had a countenance of profound, almost vacant, melancholy,
mixed with a fear that, the Judge remarked, "he had seen on the faces of
niggers that had stolen something."
"Miss Vessy," she stammered, at last, "is you measured in by ole Meshach?
Is he got you, honey? Dat he has, chile! He's gwyn to bury you under dat
pizen hat. Po' little girl! Po' Miss Vessy!"
"Oh, Aunt Hominy," Vesta said, "he will be a kind master in spite of his
queer hat, and take good care of you and all the children; for he is my
husband, and will love you all for me."
A dumb, terrified look adhered to the old black woman's face.
"No, he won't be kind to nobody," she gasped. "You has gwyn been lost,
Miss Vessy. You is measured in. De good Lord try an' bress you! Hominy
ain't measured in yit. Hominy's kivered herseff wid cammermile, an' drunk
biled lizzer tea. Hominy's gone an' got Quaker."
"What's Quaker, Aunt Hominy?"
"Quaker," the old woman repeated, backing out and looking down,
"Quaker's what keeps him from a measurin' of me in!"

Then, as Vesta drew on her bonnet and shawl, having taken her coffee and
toast, the old servant, gliding back in the depths of Teackle Hall, raised a
wild African croon, as over the dead, giving her voice a musical inflection
like the jingle of Juba rhyme:
"Good-bye, Miss Vessy! Good-bye, Aunt Hominy's baby! Good-bye, dear
young missis! Good-bye, my darlin' chile, furever, furever, an' O furever,
little Vessy Custis, O chile, farewell!"
The tears raining upon her cheeks, her wild, wringing hands and upflung
arms and shape convulsed, Vesta remembered long, and thought, as she left
Teackle Hall with Virgie, that some African superstition had, by the aid of
dreams, drawn into a passing excitement the faithful servant's brain.
At the corner of old Front Street, and extending almost out upon the little
Manokin bridge, stood Meshach Milburn's two-story house and store, with
a door upon both streets. Though planted low, in a hollow, it stood forward
like Milburn's challenging countenance, unsupported by any neighbors.
"Don't it look like a witch's, Missy?" Virgie said, as Vesta took in its not
unpicturesque outlines and crude plank carpentry, the weather-rotted roof,
the decrepit chimney at the far end, the one garret window in the sharp
gable, the scant little windows above stairs, and the doors low to the sand.
"It may have been the pride of the town fifty years ago, Virgie. I have
passed it many a day, looking with mischievous curiosity for the steeple-
hat, to show that to some city friend, little thinking I must ever enter the
house. But hear that wilful bird singing so loud! Where is it?"
"I can't tell to save my life. It ain't in the tree yonder. It's the first bird up
this mornin', Miss Vessy, sho'!"
"Is not that larger door standing ajar, the one with the four panels in it?"
Vesta asked. "Yes, it is unfastened and partly open."
The blood left Vesta's heart a moment, as the thought ran through her mind:
"He has been watched, followed home, and murdered!"
The idea seemed to explain his absence on his marriage night, and, like a
sudden flame first seen upon a burning ship, lighting up the wide ocean

with its bright terrors, Vesta saw the infinite relations of such a crime: her
almost secret marriage, her custody of her father's notes, the record of them
upon her husband's books, his last word at the church gate: "I will come
soon, darling," and now, this silent abode, with its door ajar on Sunday
dawn, before the town was up—they might bear the suspicion of a dreadful
crime by the ruined debtor house of Custis against their friendless creditor.
This thought, personal to her father, was immediately dismissed in the
feeling for a possibly murdered husband. If the idea barely touched her
sense of self, that her tremendous sacrifice had been arrested by Heaven,
and her purity saved between the altar and the nuptials by the bloodshed of
her purchaser at the hands of some meaner avenger, though not until she
had redeemed her father from Milburn's clutch, this idea never passed
beyond the portal of her mind; she repulsed it, entering, and began to think
of the easy prey her husband might have been, hated by so many, defended
by none, known to be very rich, no loss to the community, as it might think,
in its financial ignorance, and his only guard a stalwart negro notorious for
fighting.
Believing Milburn to deserve better than his present fame, Vesta advanced
towards the door of the old wooden store with a spirit of commiseration and
awe, and still the wild bird from somewhere poured out a shriek, a chuckle,
a hurrah, enough to turn her blood to ice.
As Vesta pushed open the old, seasoned door it dragged along the floor, and
the loose iron bar and padlock, dropping down, made a ring that brought an
echo like a tomb's out of the hollow interior.
"'Deed, Miss Vessy, I'm 'fraid to go in there," Virgie said.
"You are not to come in till I call you. But hear that bird rioting in song!
Does Mr. Milburn keep birds?"
"I can't tell, Miss Vessy. That bird's a Mocker. It must be in there
somewhere. Oh, don't go in, Miss Vessy; something will catch you, dear
Missy, sho'."
But Vesta was already gone, following the piercing sound of the native bird,
that seemed to be in the loft.

She saw a little counter of pine, and a pine desk built into it, and bundles of
skins, some cord-wood, a pile of lumber and boxes, a few barrels of oil or
spirits, and dust and cobwebs thick on everything; and a little way in from
the door the light and darkness made weird effects upon each other,
increasing the apparent distances, and changing the forms; and the sun, now
risen, made turning cylinders of gold-dust at certain knot-holes in the
eastern gable, across whose film she saw two lean mice stand upon the floor
unalarmed, and tamely watch her come.
The screaming of the bird was conveyed through the thin floor from above
with loud distinctness, and every note of singing things seemed to be
imitated by it, from the hawk's gloating cry to the swallow's twittering
alarm, with the most rapid versatility, and even hurry, as if the creature was
trying over every bird language, with the hope of finding one mankind
could understand. It was idle to expect to be heard amid such clamor, and
Vesta, having pounded on the floor a few times, made her way to a sort of
cupboard, that might turn out to be a stairway, and, sure enough, a door
opened on its dark side, and light from above flickered down.
At this moment the bird's notes abruptly ceased, and a voice, unlike
anything she had ever heard in her life, yet human, spoke in response to a
more natural human voice, both issuing from above.
The second voice seemed to be Milburn's; the first voice was something
like it, yet not like anything from the throat of man, and the superstition she
had been rebuking in her servant came with a thrilling influence upon her
entire nature. She was about to fly, but called out one word as she arrested
herself:
"Gentlemen! Gentlemen!"
The loud, unclassifiable voice above immediately answered:
"Gent! Gent-gent-gent-en! t-chee, t-chee! Gents, tss-tss-tss! Ha! ha!
Gentlemen!"
"May I come up?" Vesta cried.
"Come, p-chee! Come chee! come tsee! See me! see me! see me! Come p-
chee! come see! come see me!"

The last accentuation, in spite of the bird's interference, was sufficiently
distinct to amount to an invitation, and with a raising of her eyelids once
dependently to heaven, Vesta went up the stairs.
She put her head into a large, long room, which took up the whole contents
of the second story, and was lighted on three sides by the small windows
she had seen without. It had no carpet or floor-covering of any kind; the fire
was gone out upon the chimney-hearth in the end, and the atmosphere, a
little chill, was melting before the sunshine which now streamed in at both
sides of the fireplace and clearly revealed every object in the apartment,—
some clothes-pegs, a wooden table with a blue plate, a blue cup and saucer
and a saucepan upon it, and a coarse knife and fork; a large green chest, and
a leather hat-box; an old hair trunk fifty years old, and nearly falling to
pieces; black silhouettes, in little round ebony frames, of a woman and a
man hung over the mantel, and between them a silhouette of a face she had
no difficulty in recognizing to be intended for her own.
Stretched upon a low child's bed, of the sort called trundle-bed in those
days, which could be wheeled under the high-legged bed of the parents, lay
the bridegroom, in his wedding-dress and gaitered shoes, with his steeple-
crowned hat upon the faded calico quilt beside him, and his face as red as
burning fever could make it.
Vesta only verified the particulars of the inventory of Milburn's lodge
afterwards, her instant attention being drawn to the motionless form of her
husband, whose flushed face seemed to indicate a death by strangulation or
apoplexy. She went forward and put her hand upon him.
"Mr. Milburn!" she spoke.
"Milburn!" echoed a voice of piercing strength, though ill articulated. She
looked around in astonishment, and saw nobody.
"Husband!" Vesta spoke, louder, stooping over him.
"S'band! s'band! See! see!" shouted the wanton voice, almost at her elbow.
Vesta, with one hand on the helpless man's brow, turned again, almost
indignantly, for the tone seemed to address some sense of neglect or shame
in her, which she had not been guilty of. Still, nothing was to be seen.

At the far corner of the room was a step-ladder leading to a hole in the loft
above; but this was not the place of the interruption, for she heard the voice
now come as from the chimney at the opposite end of the room, nearer the
bed, and accompanied with a fluttering and scratching, as if some spirit of
evil, with the talons of a rat or a bat, was trying to break in where the
prostrate man lay on the bed of oblivion.
"Meshach! Meshach!" rang the half-human cry, "Hoo! hoo! Vesty! Vesty!
Sweet! sweet! sweet! Ha, ha! See me! See me! Meshach, he! Vesty, she!
She! she! she! Hoot! hoot! ha!"
Rapidly changing her view, with her ears no less than her heart tingling at
the use of her own name, Vesta saw on the dusty wooden mantel a common
bird of a gray color, with dashes of brown and black upon his wings, and a
whitish breast, and he was greatly agitated, as if he meant to fly upon her or
upon some other intruder she could not see.
His eyes, of black pupils upon yellowish eyeballs, sparkled with nervous
activity. He flung himself into the air above her head, uttering sounds of
such mellow richness and such infinite fecundity of modulation, that the old
hovel almost burst with intoxicated song, combining gladness, welcome,
fear, defiance, superstition, horror, and epithalamium all together, like
Orpheus gone mad, and losing the continuity of his golden notes.
The bird's upper bill was beaked like a hawk's, his lower was sharp as a
lance, and between them issued that infuriated melody and cadence and
epithet that old Patrick Henry's spirit might have migrated into from his
grave in the Virginia woods. He suddenly flung himself from his vortex of
song upon the bed of the sick man, with a twitching hop and rapid opening
and shutting of the tail, like the fan of a disturbed beauty, and thence
perched upon Milburn's peaked hat, and with a convulsive struggle of his
throat and body, as if he were in superhuman labor, brought out, distinct as
man could speak, the words,
"'Sband! 'sband! Vesty! Vesty! Sweet! sweet! Come see! come see!"
Vesta, by a quick, expert movement, grasped the bird, and smoothed it
against her bosom, and soothed its excitement.

She had heard verified what Audubon avowed, and had but recently
published in the beautiful edition of his works her father was a subscriber
to, that some said the American mocking-bird could imitate the human
voice, though the naturalist remarked that he himself had never heard the
bird do it.
The present verification, Vesta thought, of the mocking-bird's supremest
power, might have issued from its excitement at the silent and helpless
condition of its master—that master who had told Vesta that no bird in the
woods ever resisted his seductions and mystic influence.
"If that be true," Vesta said to herself, "there is no danger of this vociferous
pet making his escape if I put him out of the window till I can see if his
master speaks or lives."
So she raised the window, and flung the mocking-bird up into the air, and it
came down and dropped into the old willow-tree beneath, and there set up a
concert the Sabbath morning might have been proud of, when, in the corn-
fields, the free-footed Saviour went plucking the milky ears. Vesta could but
stop a minute and listen.
The liquid notes chased each other around in circles of dizzy harmony, as if
angels were at hide-and-seek on the blue branches of the air, eluding each
other in pure-heartedness, chasing each other with eager love, sighing
praise and happiness as their supernal hearts emitted music in the glow of
ecstasy, and carrying upward the loveliest emotions of the earth in yearning
sympathy for nature. No language, now, that Vesta could identify, was
woven into that maze of morning song, which challenged, with its fulness
and golden weight, the floods of sunshine, matching light with sound,
spontaneous both, and rivals for the favors of the soft atmosphere. Singing
with all its heart, outdoing all it knew, forgetting imitation in wild
improvisation, watching her window as it danced upon the twigs and
fluttered into the air, conscious of her listening as it purled and warbled
towards her, and sounded every pipe and trumpet, virginal and clarion,
hautboy and castanet, in the orchestra of its rustic bosom, the mocking-
bird's ode seemed almost supernatural this morn to Vesta, and she thought
to herself:

"Oh, what wedding music in the cathedral at Baltimore could equal that?
and this poor man receives it for his epithalamium, without cost, as truly as
if nature were greeting my coming to him in the old poet's spirit:
"'Now all is done; bring home the bride againe;
Bring home the triumph of our victory;
Bring home with you the glory of her gaine,
With joyance bring her and with jollity:
Sing, ye sweet angels, Alleluia sing,
That all the woods may answer, and your echo ring.'"
Relieved from the agitation of the mocking-bird, Vesta now gave her whole
attention to her husband; and the high heat of his brain and circulation, and
his muttering, like delirium, seemed to indicate that he had an intense attack
of intermittent fever. She heard the words several times repeated by him: "I
will come soon, darling!" and the simplicity of his devotion to her, unloved
as he was, had such flavor of pathos in it that the tears started to Vesta's
eyes.
"Poor soul!" she said, "it will be long before I can love him. There, his
hunger must be enduring. But my duty is not the less clear to stay by his
side and nurse him, as his wife."
At this conclusion she looked Milburn over carefully, to see if any wound
or sign of violence, whether by accident or an enemy, appeared upon him,
and finding none, and he all the time wandering in his sleep, she climbed
the ladder and peeped into the garret, to see if his servant might be there.
Samson's bed, as she supposed it was, had not been disturbed, and so,
descending, she raised the window over the larger door she had entered by,
and beckoned Virgie to come up.
"Take this tin cup," she said to the quadroon, "and go to the spring, near
here, and bring it to me full of water."
Then, as the girl tripped away, Vesta found a piece of paper, and wrote her
father a note, telling him to come to her; and to the girl, when she returned,
her mistress said:
"I want you to get a roll of new rag-carpet at Teackle Hall, and have it
brought here, to spread upon this floor. Send me, too, a pair of our brass

andirons, and pack in a basket some glass, table-ware, and linen. Tell papa
to bring one of his own night-shirts, and to take down my picture in the
sewing-room, and wrap it up, and have it sent. I must have mamma's
medicine-box and a wheelbarrow of ice; and let Hominy make some strong
tea and hot-water toast. Virgie, do not forget that this sick gentleman is my
husband, and a part of our own family!"
"The girl's face preserved its respect with difficulty as she heard the last part
of the sentence, but she replied to What she understood to be a warning by
saying:
"Miss Vessy, I never tell anybody tales."
"No, dear, you do not. I only feared you might forget the very different view
we must take of Mr. Milburn from his former life here."
Being again left alone, Vesta took the tin cup of spring-water, and, raising
the disturbed man's head, she gave him a drink, and, as he opened his eyes
to see whom it was, she heard him say, with an articulate sigh:
"Heaven."
With the remainder of the water and her handkerchief she washed his hot
skin and kept it moist, and fitful murmurs, as "Darling!" "Angel!"
"Beautiful lady!" came from his roving brain as perception and poison
contended for his mind. The inborn sense in woman of happiness after
doing good offices and being appreciated was attended with a certain
intellectual elation, and even amusement, at having witnessed what was
altogether new to her,—the life of the meaner class of white people. She
looked at the dexterous silhouette of herself, cut, probably, from memory,
long ago, by the man, no doubt, who never knew her until yesterday, and,
guessing the companion profiles to be his mother and father, she exclaimed,
mentally:
"I cannot see anything insincere about this man's statement to me. Here are
all the proofs of his deep attachment to me long before he forced my name
upon papa with such apparent insolence. If papa could see these proofs with
a woman's interest, he would have a full apology in them. Here, too, is the
bird that sings my name. What strength of prepossession the master must
have had to make the feathered pupil repeat the sound of 'Vesta,' and call

me 'sweet!' What resources, too, without the use of money or social aids!
He knows the story of our English beginning, while we make it an idle
boast; but to him Cromwell and Milton, Raleigh and Vane, are men of to-
day. Ah!" Vesta thought, "I think I see now one of those Puritans in my
husband, of whom I have heard as sprinkled through Virginia. We are the
Cavaliers. There is the Roundhead, even to the King James hat."
As she was led onward in these probabilities, Vesta took up the demure old
Hat and looked it over without any superstition, and reflected:
"Do we not exaggerate trifles? Why should this man be so derided because
he covers his head with an old hat? What of it? Suppose it shows some
vanity or eccentricity, why is there more merit in covering that up than in
expressing it in the dress? The styles we wear to-day are the derision even
of the current journals, and what will be thought of them fifty years hence,
when the fashion magazines show me as I look,—the envy of my moment,
the fright of my grandchildren?"
With rising color, she put the hat in the leather hat-box, and shut it up.
Judge Custis made his way up the dark stairs in a little while, and, as soon
as he looked at Milburn, exclaimed,
"Curses come home to roost! It was only night before last that I said, in the
presence of Meshach's negro, 'May the ague strike him and the bilious
sweat from Nassawongo mill-pond!' He slept by it that night, while I was
tossing in misery. The next night it was his turn. Daughter, he has the
bilious intermittent fever, the legacy of all his fathers. He exposed himself, I
suppose, extraordinarily that night, and I hear that he burned the old cabin
in the morning. Now he will burn, in memory of it, for the next ten weeks;
for he has, I suspect, from the time of day the burning and delirium came,
what is called the double quotidian type of the fever, with two attacks in the
twenty-four hours."
"Poor man!" exclaimed Vesta.
"Now I can account for his appearance at the marriage ceremony last night.
The fever was on him, but he went through it by hard grit, and, probably,
returning here to get some relief, he just fell over on that bed, and his head
left him for some hours. The paroxysm goes away during sleep, and returns

in the morning; so, before he could get abroad to-day, even if he could
walk, to report himself at Teackle Hall, another fever came, and a furious
one, too, and he will have good luck to survive forty days of fever, with
probably eighty sweats in that time."
"He must be doctored at once, papa."
"Well, I am good enough doctor for the bilious fever. He wants plenty of
cold lemonade, cold sponging, and ice to suck when the fever is on him.
When the chills intervene he wants blanketing, hot bottles at his feet, and
hot tea, or something stronger. In the rest between the attacks of fever and
chill, he wants calomel and Peruvian bark, and if these delirious spells go
on, he may want both bleeding and opium."
"Here are some of the things he immediately needs, then," Vesta said, as a
tall white man she had never seen before came up the stairs with Virgie,
bringing some Susquehanna ice in a blanket, and a roll of carpet, and other
articles she had sent for. The man's face wore a large bruise that heightened
his savage appearance.
"Judge," exclaimed the stranger, "I'm doin' a little work to pay fur my
board. Who's your whiffler? He'll know me when he sees me next time."
Following the stranger's eyes, Vesta and her father saw Meshach Milburn,
half raised up from the low trundle-bed, staring at Joe Johnson as if trying
to get at him. His lips moved, he partly articulated:
"Catch the—scoundre—him!"
"Joe," said the Judge, "slip away! He recognizes you as the assailant
yesterday. Don't hesitate: see how he glares at you!"
"Oh, it's the billy-noodle with the steeple nab-cheat, him that settled me
with the brick," said the stranger, in a low voice. "So I have piped him. Ah!
that's plumby!"
As the tall man started to go Milburn's countenance relaxed, he wandered
again in his head, and fell back upon the bed.
"I told you he was a hard hater, Mr. Johnson," the Judge remarked.

"Them shakes is the equivvy for the bruise he give me,—that is, till we both
heal up. He's painted the ensigns of all nations on my stummick, Judge. But
a blow is cured by a blow!"
With a look of admiring computation upon the girl Virgie, Joe Johnson
drew his long figure down the stairs, like a pole.
"What a brutal giant," Vesta said; "and how came he to be doing our
errands?"
"Why, Aunt Hominy hadn't nobody to bring the wheelbarrow load, and this
man said he'd come, and he would come, Miss Vesty, so I couldn't say
anything."
"He's a man of a good deal of influence," said the Judge, uneasily, "in the
upper part of our county, and in Delaware. Last night, after the wedding, he
slapped Meshach's hat, and old Samson knocked him down for it, and he
would have killed Samson, I hear, but for your bridegroom, who felled him
with a timely brick. It's a hard team to pass on a narrow road,—Meshach
and Samson; hey, Virgie?"
"I'm glad old Samson beat him, anyway," the pretty quadroon said, showing
her white teeth.
"Oh, what troubles will not that hat bring upon us!" Vesta thought; and then
spoke: "If Mr. Milburn was strong, I think he would hardly let that man get
out of the county before night."
"Well, daughter, what are you going to do with these articles he has
brought?"
"They are to make this room comfortable. See, he has my picture here, cut
by his own hands: I want to put a better one before him: help me hang it,
papa!"
In a few minutes the bright oil portrait, but recently painted by Mr.
Rembrandt Peale, was taking the sunlight upon its warm brunette cheeks, in
full sight of the bridegroom, and the thick rag carpet warmed the floor, and
Virgie had made a second errand to Teackle Hall, and brought back the
lady's rocking-chair that Milburn so much affected, and toilet articles, and

some dark cloth to hide the bare boards in places, and the old loft soon wore
a reasonable appearance of habitable life. Virgie made up the fire, and the
brass andirons took the cheerful flame upon them, while Vesta sweetened
the lemonade after her father had cut and squeezed the lemons, and added
some magnesia to make the drink foam.
"Really," said Judge Custis, "this miserable den takes the rudimentary form
of a home. I suppose there are now more comforts in his sight than
Meshach's whole race ever collected. What is your next move, Vesta?"
"To stay right here, darling papa, till it is safe and convenient to carry Mr.
Milburn home."
"Oh, folly! it will excite scandal, and be repulsive to my feelings. This loft
over a former groggery is no place for you: the news will spread from
Chincoteague to Arlington. Every Custis that lives will censure me and
outlaw you."
"I think you had best see Mr. Tilghman before the service, papa, and have
the marriage announced from the desk this morning: that will settle the
excitement before night. As for staying here, my home, you know, is where
he needs me. At his will I should have to stay here altogether. But I wish to
do this, dear father. It is of the greatest necessity to my nature to improve
my intercourse with my husband while he is sick, that the hasty marriage
we made may still have its period of acquaintance and good understanding.
I want to sound the possibilities of my happiness. He will be less my master
now than in his strength and possession. Perhaps—" Vesta's voice fell, and
she turned to gaze upon the bridegroom, whose fever still consumed his
wits—"perhaps I can influence his dress,—his appearance."
"You mean the steeple top!" Judge Custis exclaimed, petulantly.
At the loud sound of this familiar word, the feverish man's ears were
pierced as through some ever-open ventricle, like an old wound.
"Steeple-top! Who cried 'steeple-top'?" he muttered. "Oh, can't you see I'm
married. She hears it. Oh, spare and pity her!"
He wandered into the miasmatic world again, leaving them all touched, yet
oppressed.

"How the very flint-stone will wear away before the water-drop," Judge
Custis finally said; "his obdurate heart has been bruised by that nickname.
In public he never appeared to flinch before it; but you see it inflicted a
never-healing wound. Who has not his vulture?"
"And how unjust to pursue this man with such frivolous inhospitality so
many years," Vesta exclaimed, her splendid eyes flashing. "No account has
been made of his private reasons, his family piety, or his stern taste,
perhaps; for he must have a reason for his wardrobe, that being, it would
seem, the only thing there can be no independence about. Did you hear,
papa, his feeling for me but this moment? Strangely enough, my own mind
was thinking of that hat. It seems to be bigger than the very steeples of the
churches: it rises between the people and worship, yes, between us and
Charity, and Faith,—I had almost said Hope, too."
"The colored people all say that hat he has to wear, because the devil makes
him," the trim, fawn-footed Virgie said; "Aunt Hominy says the Bad Man
wouldn't let him make no mo' money if he didn't go to church in that hat.
Some of the white people says so, too."
"You don't believe such foolish tales as that, Virgie?" Vesta asked.
"'Deed, I don't believe anything you say is a story, Miss Vessy. Hominy
believes it. She's 'most scared out of her life about Mr. Milburn coming to
the house, an' she's got all the little ones a' most crazy with fear."
"Poor, dark, ignorant soul!" Vesta said; "she is, however, more excusable
than these grown men, whose prejudices against an article of dress are as
heathen in character as her fetish superstition."
"If he is a good man to you, Miss Vessy," the slave girl said, "I'll think the
Bad Man hasn't got anything to do with him. If he treats you bad, I'll think
the Bad Man has."
"Sometimes I feel as if men ought to have been left wild, like the animals,"
the Judge said, rinsing out Milburn's mouth with a piece of ice, "for the
obstacles to liberty raised by fashion and civilization are Asiatic in their
despotism. Think of the taxes we pay to fashion when we refused less to
kings. Think of the aristocracy based upon dress, after we have formally
extirpated it by statute! Think of the influence the boot-makers and mantua-

makers of Europe, proceeding from the courts we have renounced, exert
upon our Presidents and Senators, and, through the women of this country,
upon all the men in the land! A million women who do not know that there
are two houses of Congress, know just what bonnet the Duchess
d'Angoulême is wearing, and how Charles X. in Paris ties his cravat. So the
devil always gets a worm in every apple. The French Revolution abolished
feudality, titles, great landed property, and only omitted to abolish fashion,
and that worm—a silkworm it is—is devastating republican government
everywhere, using the women to infect us."
"Yet, in the nature of woman," said Vesta, "is the love of dress as strongly
as the love of woman is in man. Some righteous purpose is in it, papa,—to
ornament ourselves like the birds, and let art be born."
"God knows his own mysteries," Judge Custis said. "But Vesta, go home
with me to your own comfortable home, and let Virgie stay here to keep
watch."
"Master, I'm afraid to stay here," the girl exclaimed, sidling towards her
young mistress.
"Then I will stay, and be nurse," the Judge said. "Fear not! I will give him
only wholesome medicine, whatever poison he has given me and mine. You
stay in Teackle Hall, my precious child! Indeed, I must command it."
Vesta smiled sadly and pointed to her husband.
"He commands me now, papa. You were too indulgent a master, and spoiled
me. No, Virgie and I will both remain, and you conciliate mamma. All is
going well. Really, I am happy and grateful to my Heavenly Father that he
is smoothing the way so gently, that I thought would be so hard."
"Oh, the conditions of this disease are repulsive, my child. You are a lady."
"No, I am a woman," said Vesta; "that man and I must see one or the other
die. You do not know how easy it is for a woman to nurse a man. Though
love might make the task more grateful, yet gratitude will do much to
sweeten it. He has loved me and taken the shadow from your old age for
me. Shall I leave him here to feel that I despise him? No."

She kissed her father, and gave him his cane.
"Come back this afternoon, my love," she said to him.
"Nothing on earth is like you!" exclaimed the old man. "I fear you are not
mine."
"Yes," Vesta said, "you are full of good, wherever you may have strayed."
As the sound of his feet passed from the doorway below, the sick man, with
a sigh as from burning fire, opened his eyes and looked around. They fell
upon her picture.
"What is that?" he murmured; "I dreamed nothing like that, just now."
"It is my picture. I am here," Vesta said, bending over him. "Don't you
know me?"
"Who are you, dear lady?" he breathed, with fever-weakened eye-sockets,
and mind struggling up to his distended orbs, "do I know you?"
"Yes, I am Vesta—Vesta Custis, I was. I am your wife."
His eyes opened wide, as if hearing some wonderful news.
"Wife? what is that? My wife? No."
"Yes, I am Vesta Milburn, your wife."
He seemed to remember, and, with compassion for him, she stooped and
kissed him.
"God bless you!" he sighed, and passed away into the Upas shades again.
At that minute the mocking-bird flew in the open window and fluttered
above the lowly bed, and perched upon the headboard and began to sing:
"'Sband! 'sband! see! see! Vesty, sweet! Vesty, sweet! Ha, ha! hurrah!"

Chapter XV.
THE KIDNAPPER.

It seemed to Judge Daniel Custis as he walked abroad into the Sunday
sunshine, that he had never seen a more perfect day. The leaves were
turning on the great sycamore-trees, and the maples along the rise in the
road wore their most delicate garments of nankeen, while some young
hickories, loaded with nuts, and a high gum-tree, splendid in finery,
beckoned him out their way, across the Manokin bridge to the opposite hill,
where the Presbyterian church overlooked the town.
The Judge, whose eyes were filled with happy tears, partly at the real relief
to his circumstances accomplished by Vesta's great sacrifice, and partly by
the scene just closed, of her natural honor and fidelity to the man who had
forced her wedding vows from her, took the northern course and crossed the
little bridge, and as he went up the hill the environs of the town and the
town itself spread out behind him in the stillness of the Sabbath, and the
quails and fall birds piped and cackled low in the corn and the grain stubble.
Some wild-geese in the south flew over the low gray woods towards the
bay; a pack of hounds somewhere bayed like distant music; he heard the
turkeys gobble, at one of the adjacent farms on the swells in the marshy
landscape, where abundance, not otherwise denoted, showed in the fat
poultry that roosted in the trees like living fruit and spoke apoplectically.
While he drank in the wine of autumn on the air, that had a bare taste of
frost, like the first acid in the sweet cider, he saw a carriage or two come
over the level roads towards Princess Anne, and the church-bell told their
errand as it dropped into the serenity its fruity twang, like a pippin rolling
from the bough. So easily, so musically, so regularly it rang, like the voice
of something pure, that was steady even in its joys, that the Judge took off
his broad white fur hat, as if to a lady, and listened with something between
courtesy and piety.

As the bell continued other carriages came towards town, and some passed
him, their inmates all bowing, and often stealing a look back to see Judge
Custis again, the first man in the county.
They looked upon an humbled heart, a gladdened soul, which the sharp
hand of affliction had made to bleed, while an unforeseen Providence in his
darling child had kissed the wound to sleep and sucked the poison from it.
Raising his brow towards the bright blue sky, as if he could not raise it high
enough to feel more of that heavenly rest encinctured there, the Judge
sighed forth a happy wish, like the kiss of love after a quarrel, when doubt
is all dispelled or wrong forgiven:
"O make me as a little child! Wash out my stains! Lead me in the path my
child has walked, or I shall never see her in the life to come!"
His lips trembled and his breast heaved convulsively. In that idea of being
unfit to enter where his child would go, in the more abundant life beyond
the present, he received a distinct sermon from the long-empty pulpit of
nature and conscience, and revelations from within clearer than Holy
Scriptures; for he felt the justice of the final separation of the impure from
the pure, and the faith of perseverance in good to draw onward towards
holiness itself, and perseverance in sensuality and selfishness to detain the
spirit in its husk of swine. His agony increased.
"Where shall I drift if I go on," he said, "playing the sleek magistrate and
family head, and loving to slip away in the dark, like negroes hunting coons
by night? What is escaping discovery to the increasing degradation of my
own sanctuary, my created spirit? Can I find the way I have wandered down
and retrace my steps? There is but little of life left me to do it in, but by
God's help I will try! Yes, this golden Sabbath I will do something to begin.
What shall it be?"
He put on his hat, and said to himself: "I will go to the Methodist meeting-
house: they work directly upon the conscience, deepen the sense of sin, and
preach a quick cleansing as by light shining in. There I may grovel in the
sight of men and women and arise redeemed. But, no. It is the Sabbath my
daughter's marriage is to be announced in our own church, and it would be
cowardly, not to say unseemly, to fly from one worship to another now. If I

go to church this morning it must be to our own. Is there any excuse but
cowardice for not going?"
He looked into his debtor nature, to see what he owed to anybody, that
might be owned and settled this day.
Slowly and almost to his dislike there arose an obligation to his wife—the
obligation of love he was defrauding her of, if, indeed, he loved her at all
with the ardor of old times.
She had fretted his passion away in little sticklings for little proprieties, and
narrowing understanding, and subservience to effeminate social traditions.
She jarred upon the health of his intellect with her unsympathetic
refinements and pitiful uncharities, and fear of all catholicity. She was
gentility itself, without the spark of nature, and believing that she inhabited
the castle towers of exclusiveness and social righteousness, she had made
his home the donjon-keep of his knighthood, at once the loftiest domestic
apartment and the prison.
Nevertheless, she was his wife, and something of her nature must be in
Vesta, though the Judge had not found it. He reflected that his waywardness
might have sharpened her peculiarities and spread the distance between
their minds, till, deprived of a husband's guidance, her fluttered woman's
nature had quit the pasturage of the fields and air, and perched upon her nest
and vegetated there.
"I have gone away from her," he said, "and complain that she has not
grown. I have myself abounded in village dignity and pretension, and set
her the example of respecting nothing else. I have been a fraud, and wonder
that she is not wordly-wise."
He found his infirm will very obdurate against making love to his wife
again, but the request he had just made of Heaven, to lead him into the right
steps, prevailed upon him to make his worship at home this morning.
"Yes," he said, "I will start right. She is sick and alone, and Vesta taken
from her. I will send a note to the rector to announce the marriage, as Vesta
requested, and do my worship at Teackle Hall this day."

The Manokin, spreading wider as it flowed farther from the town, and
widening from a brook to a creek, till it moistened fringes of marsh and cut
low bluffs into the fields, never seemed to invite him so much to wander
along its sluices as this morn.
"If my wife would only walk with me into the country," he said, restlessly,
"how more companionable we would have been to each other! But she
cannot walk at all; all masculine intercourse ceased between us years ago,
and the dull, small range of household talk, and the dynastic gossip of the
good families, wear down my spirits. But I have been a truant husband, and
my tongue is parched by dusty rovings in prodigal ways. Let me woo her
again with all my might!"
He walked through Princess Anne, worship now having commenced in all
the churches, and saw nobody upon the street except a divided group before
the tavern. There he heard Jimmy Phœbus speak to Levin Dennis sharply:
"Levin, what you doin' with that nigger buyer? Ain't you got no Dennis
pride left in you?"
The Judge saw that Joe Johnson, safe from civil process on Sunday, even if
his enemy had not been helpless in bed, was washing Levin Dennis's
brandy-sickened head under the street pump, plying the pump-handle and
shampooing him with alternate hands.
"Jimmy," answered Levin, when he was free from the spout, "this
gentleman's give me a job. I'm goin' to take him out for tarrapin on the
Sound. He's goin' to pay me for it."
"Tarrapin-catchin' on a Sunday ain't no respectable job for a Dennis,
nohow," cried Jimmy Phœbus, bluntly; "an' doin' it with a nigger buyer is a
fine splurge fur you, by smoke! I can't see where your pride is, Levin, to
save my life."
Jack Wonnell, wearing a bell-crown, looked on with timid enjoyment of this
plain talk, opening his mouth to grin, shutting it to shudder.
The big stranger, dropping Levin Dennis, strode in his long jack-boots, in
which his coarse trousers were stuffed, right to the front of Jimmy Phœbus,

and glared at him through his inflamed and unsightly eye. Jimmy met his
scowl with a mildness almost amounting to contempt.
"Hark ye!" spoke the stranger, "you have been a picking a quarrel with me
all yisterday, an' to-day air a beginnin' of it agin. Do you want to fight?"
"No," said Jimmy, whittling a stick; "I ain't fond of fighting, and I never do
it of a Sunday. I wouldn't be guilty of fightin' you, by smoke!"
"I have tuk a bigger nug than you and nicked his kicks into the bottom of
his gizzard till his liver-lights fell into my mauleys. So it's nish or knife
betwixt us, my bene cove!"
He put his hand upon his hip, where he carried a sheath-knife.
"Raise that hand," said Jimmy Phœbus, with a quick pass of his whittling
knife to the giant's throat. "Raise it or, by smoke! yer goes yer jugler."
As Phœbus spoke he lifted one foot, of a prodigious size, as deftly as an
elephant hoisting his trunk, and kicked the man's hand from the hip pocket
without moving either his own body or countenance. It was done so
automatically that the other turned fiercely to see who kicked him, and his
sheath-knife, partly raised, was flung by the force of the kick several yards
away.
"Pick up his knife, Levin," Jimmy said, "or he'll hurt hisself with it."
At this moment Judge Custis came up and pushed the two powerful men
apart.
"Fighting on Sunday in our public street," he exclaimed; "Phœbus, I
wouldn't have thought it of you!"
"This yer bully, Judge," Jimmy said coolly, "started to take Prencess Anne
the fust day, an' ole Meshach's Samson knocked him a sprawlin', an'
Meshach hisself finished him. To-day he starts in to lead off yon poor
imbecile, Levin Dennis, and, as I expresses my opinion of it, he draws his
knife on me; so I takes my foot, Judge, that you have seen me untie a knot
with, and I spiles his wrist with it. Take care of his knife, Levin,—he's a
pore creetur without it."

"We'll have this out, nope for nope, or may I take the morning-drop!"
growled the strange man.
"That kind of language ain't understood in honest company," Jimmy
Phœbus said; "I s'pose it's thieves' lingo, used among your friends, or,
maybe, big words you bully strangers with, when you want to cut a splurge.
Now, as you've been licked by a nigger and kicked by a white man, maybe
you can understand my language! Hark you, too, nigger buyer! Do you
know where I saw you first?"
For the first time a flash of fire came from the pungy captain's black
cherries of eyes, and his huge broad face of swarthy color expressed its full
Oriental character:
"The last time I saw you, Joe Johnson, was not a-lurking in Judge Custis's
kitchen fur no good, nor a-insultin' of the Judge's t'other visitor, Milburn of
the steeple-top: it was a-huggin' the whippin'-post on the public green of
Georgetown, State of Delaware, an' the sheriff a-layin' of it over your back;
an' after he sot you up in the pillory I took the rottenest egg I could git, an' I
bust it right on the eye where that nigger bruised you yisterday!"
The oppressive silence, as Joe Johnson slunk back, desperate with rage, yet
unable to deny, was broken by Jack Wonnell's unthinking interjection:
"Whoop, Jimmy! Hooraw for Prencess Anne!"
"An' why did I git that egg an' make you smell it, Joe Johnson? Because, by
smoke! you was a stinkin' kidnapper, robbing of the pore free niggers of
their liberty, knowin' that they didn't carry no arms and couldn't make no
good defense! That's your trade, an' it's the meanest an' most cowardly in
the world. It's doin' what the Algerynes does in fair fighting. You're a fine
American citizen, ain't you? I know your gang, and a bloody one it is, but
you can't look a white man in the eye, because you're a thief and a coward!"
The Hellenic nature of the bay captain had never displayed itself to the
Judge with this fulness, and he felt some natural admiration as he took
Phœbus by the arm.
"Well, well!" said the Judge, "let him go now, Phœbus! Mr. Johnson, don't
let me see you in Princess Anne again to-day. Continue your journey and

disturb us no more, or I shall put criminal process upon you, and you see we
have stout constables in Somerset."
As he led Phœbus around the corner of the bank, the Judge said:
"James, my wife is so sick that I must keep house with her this morning,
and I want a little note left at the church for Mr. Tilghman. Will you take
it?"
"Why, with pleasure, Judge," the nonchalant villager replied. "I don't look
very handsome in the 'piscopal church, but I'll do a' arrand."
As the Judge wrote the note with his gold pencil on a leaf of his
memorandum book, he said:
"James, did you identify that man yesterday?"
"Yes, I knowed him as soon as he come to the tavern. This mornin', seein' of
him around town, I was afear'd Samson Hat would stumble on him, and the
nigger buyer would kill him for yisterday's blow. Thinks I: 'Samson is too
white a nigger to be killed that way, by smoke!' but the prejudice agin a
nigger hittin' a white man is sich in this state that Joe Johnson, bloody as he
is, would never have stretched hemp for Samson Hat; so I picked a quarrel
with the nigger buyer to take the fight out of him before Samson should
come. He won't fight nobody now in this town. His hokey-pokey is done
yer."
"You took a great risk, Phœbus. He is such an evil fellow in his
resentments, that I let him hide and eat in my quarters for fear of some ill
requital if I refused. That gang of Patty Cannon's is the curse of the Eastern
Shore."
"And if you'll pardon a younger and a porer man, Judge, it's jest sich
gentlemen as you that lets it go on. You politicians give them people
'munity, an' let 'em alone because they fight fur you in 'lection times an' air
popular with foresters an' pore trash, because they persecutes niggers an'
treats to liquor. You know the laws is agin their actions on both sides of the
Delaware line, but in Maryland they're a dead letter."

"You speak plain truth, James Phœbus, brave as your conduct. But the poor
men must make a sentiment against these kidnappers, because among the
ignorant poor they find their defenders and equals."
"Judge," the pungy captain said, "they'se a-makin' a pangymonum of all the
destreak about Patty Cannon's. By smoke! it's a shame to liberty. In open
day they lead free niggers, men, wimmin, an' little children, too, to be sold,
who's free as my mommy and your daughter."
Judge Custis thought painfully of the scant freedom his daughter now
enjoyed. Jimmy Phœbus continued:
"Now yer, we're raising hokey-pokey about the Algerynes and the
Trypollytins capturin' of a few Christian people an' sellin' of 'em to Turkey,
an' about the Turkey people makin' slaves of the Christian Greek folks.
Henry Clay is cuttin' a big splurge about it. Money is bein' raised all over
the country to send it to 'em. Commodo' Decatur was a big man for a-
breakin' of it up. By smoke! they're sellin' more free people to death and
hell along Mason and Dixon's line, than up the whole buzzum of the
Mediterranean Sea."
The brown-skinned speaker was more excited now than he had been during
all the collision with Joe Johnson.
"Indeed, Phœbus, they have kidnapped several thousand people, the
Philadelphia abolitionists say, but the reports must be exaggerated. The
demand for negroes is so great, since the cotton-gin and the foreign markets
have made cotton a great staple, and the direct importation of slaves from
Africa has been stopped, that there is a great run for border-state negroes,
and free colored people seldom are righted when they have been pulled
across the line."
"They never are righted, Judge Custis! I'm ashamed of my native state.
Only a few years ago, when I was a boy, people around yer was a-freein' of
their niggers, and it was understood that slavery would a-die out, an'
everybody said, 'Let the evil thing go.' But niggers began to go up high;
they got to be wuth eight hunderd dollars whair they wasn't wuth two
hunderd; and all the politicians begun to say: 'Niggers is not fit to be free.
Niggers is the bulrush, or the bulwork, or bull-something of our nation.'

And then kidnapping of free niggers started, and the next thing they'll
kidnap free American citizens!"
"Tut! tut! James! it will never go that far."
"Won't it? What did Joe Johnson say to me last night before the Washington
Tavern? He said: 'I've sold whiter niggers than you, myself. I kin run you to
market an' git my price for you!'"
The bay sailor took off his hat.
"Look at me!" he continued; "by smoke! look on my brown skin and black
eyes an' coal black hair. Whair did they come from? They come from
Greece, whair Leonidas an' Marky Bozarris and all them fellers came from:
that's what my daddy said. He know'd better than me. I'm nothin' but a pore
Eastern Shore man sailing my little vessel, but I'm a free-born man, and I
tell you, Judge, it's a dangerous time when nothing but his shade of color
protects a free man."
"James Phœbus," the Judge said, gravely, "I hope you believe me when I
say that I think all these things outrages, and they grow out of the greater
outrage of slavery itself. We are being governed by new states, hatched in
the Southwest from the alligator eggs of old slavery, that had grown into
political and moral disrepute with us in Maryland and Virginia."
"There's no nigger in me," Phœbus said, putting on his hat, "but I have
taken these hints about my looking like a nigger to heart, and I'll take a
nigger's part when he is imposed on, as if he was some of the body and
blood of my Lord Jesus. Now you hear it!"
"And brave enough you are to mean it, my honest fellow. So do my errand,
and good-morning, James."

Chapter XVI.
BELL-CROWN MAN.

As the Judge and Phœbus had turned the corner of the bank Samson Hat
appeared, driving down Princess Anne's broad main street a young white
girl.
"There's the nigger that set my peep in limbo," muttered the negro dealer,
"but even he shall go past to-day. This accursed town is packed agin me."
He took a long look at Samson, however, who mildly returned it in the most
respectful manner, as if he had never seen the strange gentleman before.
"And now, my pals," Joe Johnson said, turning to Levin Dennis and Jack
Wonnell, "we will all three go down to the bay and I'll pervide the lush, and
pay the soap while you ketch the tarrapin, an' let me sleep my nazy off."
"I'll go an' no mistake!" cried Jack Wonnell, who had been taking a drink of
pump-water out of his bell-crown. "So will you, Levin."
Levin Dennis hesitated; "I want to tell my mother first," he said, "maybe
she won't like me fur to go of a Sunday. She'll send Jimmy Phœbus after
me."
Joe Johnson took a bag of gold from inside his waist-band, hanging by a
loop there, and held up a piece of five before the boy's bright eyes:
"Yer, kid! That's yourn if you don't have no mother about it. Pike away with
me, pig widgeon, an' find your boat, and I pay you this pash at sundown."
Levin's credulous eyes shone, and with one reluctant look towards his
mother's cottage he led the way into the country.
Little was said as they walked an hour or more towards the west, the
stranger apparently brooding upon his indignities, and twice passing around
the jug of brandy which Jack Wonnell was made to carry, and before noon
they came to a considerable creek, out in which was anchored a small

vessel bearing on her stern in illiterate, often inverted, letters the name:
Ellenora Dennis.
"What's that glibe on yonder?" asked Johnson, pointing to the letters.
"That's his mother's name, boss," Jack Wonnell said, hitching at the
stranger's breeches, "she's a widder, an' purty as a peach."
"Ain't you got no daddy, pore pap-lap?" Johnson asked coarsely.
"He's gone sence I was a baby," Levin answered; "he went on Judge Custis's
uncle's privateer that never was heard of no mo'. We don't know if the
British tuk him an' hanged him, or if the Idy sunk somewhair an' drowned
him, or if she's a-sailin' away off. I has to take care of mother."
"Humph!" growled Joe Johnson; "son of a gander and a gilflirt: purty kid,
too—got the ole families into him. No better loll for me!"
Drawing a punt concealed under some marsh brush, young Levin pushed
off to his vessel, made her tidy by a few changes, pulled up the jib, and
brought her in to the bank.
"Mr. Johnson, I never ketched tarrapin of a Sunday befo', but I reckon tain't
no harm."
"Harm? what's that?" Joe Johnson sneered. "Hark ye, boy, no funking with
me now! When I begin with a kinchin cove I starts squar. If ye think it's
wicked to ketch tarrapin, why, I want 'em caught. If you don't keer, you kin
jest stick up yer sail an' pint for Deil's Island, an' we'll make it a woyige!"
Not quite clear as to his instructions, Levin took the tiller, and Jack Wonnell
superserviceably got the terrapin tongs, and stood in the bow while the cat-
boat skimmed down Monie Creek before a good breeze and a lee tide. The
chain dredge for terrapin was thrown over the side, but the boat made too
much sail for Wonnell to take more than one or two tardy animals with his
tongs, as they hovered around the transparent bottoms making ready for
their winter descent into the mud.
"Take up your dredge," Johnson commanded in a few minutes. "It makes us
go slow."

Jack Wonnell obediently made a few turns on the windlass, and as the bag
came up, two terrapin of the then common diamond-back variety rolled on
the deck, and a skilpot.
"That's enough tarrapins," Johnson said, "unless you're afraid it's doin'
wrong, Levin. Say, spooney! is it wicked now?"
The boy laughed, a little pale of face, and Johnson closed his remark with:
"Nawthin' ain't wicked! Sunday is dustman's day to be broke by heroes.
D'ye s'pose yer daddy on the privateer wouldn't lick the British of a
Sunday? The way to git rich, sonny, is to break all the commandments at the
post, an' pick 'em up agin at the score!"
"That's the way, sho' as you're born. Whoop! Johnson, you got it right!"
chuckled Jack Wonnell, not clear as to what was said.
Levin Dennis felt a little shudder pass through him, but he gave the stranger
the helm, and by Wonnell's aid raised the main-sheet, and the light boat
went winging across Monie Bay, starting the water-fowl as it tacked
through them.
"Here's another swig all round," Joe Johnson exclaimed, "and then I'll go
below to lollop an hour, for I'm bloody lush."
Levin drank again, and it took the shuddering instinct out of him, and Joe
Johnson cried, as he disappeared into the little cabin:
"Ree-collect! You pint her for Deil's Island thoroughfare, and wake me,
pals, at the old camp-ground, fur to dine."
The two Princess Anne neighbors felt relieved of the long man's company,
and Jack Wonnell lay on his back astern and grinned at Levin as if there was
a great unknown joke or coincidence between them, finally whispering:
"Where does he git all his gold?"
Levin shook his head:
"Can't tell, Jack, to save my life. Nigger tradin', I reckon. It must be payin'
business, Jack."

"Best business in the world. Wish I had a little of his money, Levin. Hu-ue-
oo!" giving a low shout, "then wouldn't I git my gal!"
"Who's yo' gal, Jack, for this winter?"
"You won't tell nobody, Levin?"
"No, hope I may die!"
Jack put his bell-crown up to the side of his mouth, executed another grin,
winked one eye knowingly, and whispered:
"Purty yaller Roxy, Jedge Custis's gal."
"She won't have nothin' to do with you, Jack; she's too well raised."
"She ain't had yit, Levin, but I'm follerin' of her aroun'. There ain't no white
gal in Princess Anne purty as them two house gals of Jedge Custis's."
"Well, what kin you do with a nigger, Jack? You never kin marry her."
"Maybe I kin buy her, Levin."
"She ain't fur sale, Jack. Jedge Custis never sells no niggers. You can't buy a
nigger to save your life. When some of Jedge Custis's niggers in Accomac
run away he wouldn't let people hunt for 'em."
Jack Wonnell put his bell-crown to the side of his mouth again, grinned
hideously, and whispered:
"Kin you keep a secret?"
Levin nodded, yes.
"Hope a may die?"
"Hope I may die, Jack."'
"Jedge Custis is gwyn to be sold out by Meshach Milburn."
"What a lie, Jack!"

Levin let the tiller half go, and the Ellenora Dennis swung round and
flapped her sails as if such news had driven all the wind out of them.
"Jack," Levin exclaimed, "Jimmy Phœbus says you've turned out a reg'lar
liar. Now I believe it, too."
"Hope I may die!" Jack Wonnell protested, "I never does lie: it's too hard to
find lies for things when people comes an' tells you, or you kin see fur
yourseff. Jimmy called me a liar fur sayin' Meshach Milburn was gone into
the Jedge's front do', but we saw him come out of it, didn't we?"
"Yes, that was so; but this yer one is an awful lie."
"Well, Levin, purty yaller Roxy, she told me, an' she's too purty to tell lies. I
loves that gal like peach-an'-honey, Levin, an' I don't keer whether she's
white or no. She's mos' as white as me, an' a good deal better."
"So you do talk to Roxy some?"
"Levin, I'll tell you all about it, an' you won't tell nobody. Well, I picks
magnoleys an' wild roses an' sich purty things fur Roxy to give her missis,
an' Roxy gives me cake, an' chicken, an' coffee at the back door, knowin' I
ain't got much to buy 'em with. Lord bless her! she don't half know I don't
think as much of them cakes an' snacks an' warm rich coffee, as I do of her
purty eyes. She's a white angel with a little coffee in her blood, but it's ole
Goverment Javey an' more than half cream!"
Here Levin laughed loudly, and said that Jack must have learned that out of
a book.
"Oh," said Jack, shutting one eye hard and joining in the grin, "sence I ben
in love I kin say lots o' smart things like that. I have seen purty little Roxy
grow up from a chile, an' as she begin to round up and git tall, says I:
'Nigger or no nigger, she's angel!' The white gals they all throwed off on
me, caze I wasn't earnin' nothin', an' I sot my eyes on Roxy Custis an' I
says: 'What kin I do fur to make her shine to me?' So I kept a-follerin' of her
everywhere, an' I see her one day comin' along the road a-pickin' of the wild
blossoms an' with her han' full of 'em, an' I says: 'Roxy, what you doin' of
with them flowers?' 'They're fur my missis, Miss Vesty,' says she; 'she lives
on wild flowers, an' they're all I has to give her, an' I want her to love me as

much as Virgie.' You see Levin, the t'other gal, Virgie, waits on Miss Custis,
an' Roxy she was a little jealous. Then I says: 'Roxy, I kin git you flowers
for your missis. I know whair the magnoleys is bloomin' the whitest an' a-
scentin' the whole day long.' 'Do you?' says she, 'Oh, Mr. Wonnell, I would
like to have a bunch of magnoleys to put on Miss Vesty's toilet every day.'
'I'll git 'em fur you, Roxy,' says I, 'becaze I allus thought you was a little
beauty.' Says she: 'I'd give most anything to surprise Miss Vesty with
flowers every day,—rale wild ones!' 'Then,' says I, 'Roxy, I'll git' em fur you
for a kiss!' An' she most a-blushed blood-red an' ran away."
"That's what I told you, Jack, she's raised too well to be talkin' to white
fellers."
"Nobody's raised too well," rejoined Jack Wonnell, "to be deef to love and
kindness. Says I to myself: 'Jack, you skeert that gal. Now say nothin' mo'
about the kiss, an' go git her the flowers every day, an' she'll think mo' of
you!' So away I went to King's Creek an' pulled the magnoleys, an' I come
to the do' an' asked ole Hominy to bring down Roxy for a minute. Roxy she
come, an' was gwyn to run away till she saw my flowers, an' she stopped a
minute an' says I: 'I jest got 'em for you, Roxy, becaze I see you when you
was a little chile.' She tuk 'em an' says: 'It was very kind of you, sir,' an'
kercheyed an' melted away. Next day I was thar agin, Levin, an' I says, to
make it seem like a trade: 'Roxy, kin ye give me a cup of coffee?' 'Law, yes!'
she says, forgittin' her blushin' right away. So I kept shady on love an' put it
on the groun's of coffee, an', Levin, I everlastin'ly fotched the wild flowers
till that gal got to be a-lookin' fur me at the do' every day, an' I'd hide an' see
her come to the window an' peep fur me. One day she says, as I was drinkin'
of the coffee: 'Mr. Wonnell, what do you put yourself at sech pains fur to
'blige a pore slave girl that ain't but half white?' I thought a minute, so as to
say something that wouldn't skeer her off, an' I says: 'Roxy, it's becaze I'm
sech a pore, worthless feller that the white gals won't look at me!' The tears
come right to her eyes, an' she says: 'Mr. Wonnell, if I was white I would
look at you.' 'I believe you would,' says I, 'becaze you've got a white heart,
Roxy.'"
"Jack, you're a dog-gone smart lover," said Levin. "I didn't think you had no
kind of sense."

"Love-makin' is the best sense of all," said Jack, "it's that sense that keeps
the woods a-full of music, where the birds an' bees is twitterin' and hummin'
an' a-matin'. Love is the last sense to come, after you can see, an' hear, an'
feel, an' they're give to people to find out something purty to love. Love was
the whole day's work in the garding of Eden befo' man got too industrious,
an' it's all the work I do, an' I hope I do it well."
"Now what did Roxy tell you about Meshach Milburn and Judge Custis?"
"You see, Levin, as I kept up the flower-givin', I could see a little love start
up in purty Roxy, but she didn't understand it, an' I was as keerful not to
skeer it as if it had been a snow-bird hoppin' to a crumb of bread. She would
talk to me about her little troubles, an' I listened keerful as her mammy,
becaze little things is what wimmin lives on, an' a lady's man is only a feller
patient with their little talk. The more I listened the more she liked to tell
me, an' I saw that Roxy was a-thinkin' a great deal of me, Levin, without
she or me lettin' of it on.
"This mornin' she came to the door with her eyes jest wiped from a-cryin'.
Says I, 'Roxy, little dear, what ails you?' 'Oh, nothin',' says she, 'I can't tell
you if thair is.' 'Here's your wild flowers for Miss Vesty,' says I, 'beautiful to
see!' 'Oh,' says Roxy, 'Miss Vesty won't need 'em now.' Says I: 'Roxy, air
you goin' to have all that trouble on your mind an' not let me carry some of
it?' 'Oh, my friend,' she says, 'I must tell you, fur you have been so kind to
me: don't whisper it! But my master is in debt to Meshach Milburn, an' he's
married Miss Vesty, an' we think we're all gwyn to be sold or made to live
with that man that wears the bad man's hat.' Says I: 'Roxy, darling, maybe I
kin buy you.' 'Oh, I wish you was my master,' Roxy said. An' jest at that
minute, love bein' oncommon strong over me this mornin', I took the first
kiss from Roxy's mouth, an' she didn't say nothin' agin it."
Here Jack Wonnell kissed the atmosphere several times with deep unction,
and ended by a low whoop and whistle, and looked at Levin Dennis with
one eye shut, as if to get Levin's opinion of all this.
"Well," Levin said, "I never ain't been in love yet. I 'spect I ought to be. But
mother is all I kin take keer of, and, pore soul! she's in so much trouble over
me that she can't love nobody else. I git drunk, an' go off sailin' so long, an'

spend my money so keerless, that if the Lord didn't look out for her maybe
she'd starve."
"Yes, Levin, you likes brandy as much as I likes the gals. You go off for
tarrapin, an' taters, an' oysters, an' peddles 'em aroun' Prencess Anne, an'
then somebody pulls you in the grog-shops an' away goes your money, an'
your mother ain't got no tea and coffee."
"Jack," said Levin, abruptly, "do you believe in ghosts?"
"I don't know, Levin. If I saw one maybe I would, but I'm too trashy for
ghosts to see me."
"Well, now," Levin said, "there's a ghost, or something, that looks out for
mother when I'm drunk or gone, an' it leaves tea and coffee in the window
for her."
"Sho'! why, Levin, that's Jimmy Phœbus! He's ben in love with your mother
for years an' she won't have him, but he keep's a hangin' on. He's your
mother's ghost."
"No, Jack. I thought it was till Jimmy come to me an' asked me who I
guessed it was. He was a little jealous, I reckon. I said: 'It's you, of course,
Jimmy!' 'No,' says he, 'by smoke! I don't do any hokey-pokey like that.
What I give, I go and give with no sneakin' about it or prying into Ellanory's
poverty.' He was right down mad, but he couldn't find nothing out. So I
think it may be the ghost of father, drowned at sea, bringing tea and coffee,
and sometimes a dress, and a pair of shoes, too, to keep mother warm."
Levin Dennis, standing against the tiller, seemed to Jack Wonnell to be fair
and spiritual as a woman, as his comely brow and large eyes grew serious
with this relation of his father's mysterious fate. His dark auburn hair, in
short ringlets parted in the middle, gave his sunburnt countenance a likeness
to some of the old gentle families with which he was allied, his father
having been a son of younger sons, in a date when primogeniture prevailed
in all this bay region; and therefore, possessing nothing, he went into the
war against England as a sailor, and his family influence obtained for him
command of the new privateer launched on the Manokin, the Ida, which set
sail with a good crew and superior armament, amid the acclaims of all
Somerset, and, sailing past the Capes into the ocean with all her bunting

flying, slid down the farther world to everlasting silence and the vapors of
mystery.
His widow waited long and patiently with this only boy, Levin, a scarcely
lisping child, and stories of every kind were current; that the captain had
been captured and hanged by the enemy, and the ship burned or
condemned; that he had hoisted the black flag and become a pirate and quit
the western world for the East India waters; and finally, that the Ida
foundered off Guiana and every soul was drowned.
The widow, a beautiful woman, neglected by her husband's connection, who
were sullen at the loss of their investment and their expected profits from
the vessel, lived in the little house she had owned before her marriage, and
sank into the plainer class of people, almost losing her identity with the
ruling families to which her son was kin, but in her humbler class highly
respected and solicited in marriage.
She was still young and fair, and Jimmy Phœbus, a hale bachelor, and
captain of a trading schooner, had endeavored to marry her for years, and
held on to his hope patiently, exercising many kind offices for her, though
his means were limited, and he had poor kin looking to him for help. She
feared the absent lover might be alive and return to find her another's wife.
So her son, growing up without a father's discipline, and being too
respectable, it was supposed, to put to a trade or be indentured, lived by
fugitive pursuits on land and water, hauling and peddling vegetables and
provisions at times; and now, by the gift of Jimmy Phœbus, he sailed his
little sloop or cat-boat chiefly to carry terrapin to Baltimore. Rough sailor
acquaintances, exposure, a credulous, easily led nature, and almost total
neglect of school at a time when education was a high privilege, had made
him wayward and often intemperate, but without developing any selfish or
cruel characteristics, and being of an agreeable exterior and affable
disposition, he fell a prey to any strangers who might be in town—gunners,
negro buyers, idle planters, and spreeing overseers, many of whom hired his
company and vessel to take their excursions; and, while loving his mother,
and being her only reliance, she saw him slipping further and further into
manhood without steadiness or education or fixed principles, or any female
influence to draw him to domestic constraints.

His slender, supple figure, and marks of gentility in his limbs, and shapely
brow and large, gentle eyes, poorly consorted with ragged clothes, bare feet,
and absolute dependence on chance employment, the latter becoming more
precarious as his age and stature made more demands for money through
his false appetites.
"Jack," said Levin Dennis, "what do you mean by gittin' money to buy
Roxy Custis? You never git no money."
"Won't he give it to me? Him?" Jack Wonnell indicated the hatchway down
which Joe Johnson had gone. "He's got bags of it."
"Him? Why, Jack, how much money do you s'pose a beautiful servant like
Roxy will fetch?"
"Won't that piece he's gwyn to give you buy her?"
"Five dollars? Why, you poor fool, she will bring five hundred dollars—
maybe thousands. This nigger trader, with all his gold, would be hard
pushed, I 'spect, to buy Roxy."
Jack looked downcast, and failed to wink or whistle.
"Gals like her," said Levin, "goes for mistresses to rich men, an' sometimes
they eddicates 'em, I've hearn tell, to know music, an' writin', an' grammar,
an' them things."
"And a pore man who wouldn't abuse a gal most white like that, but would
respect her an' marry her, too, Levin, they makes laws agin him! Maybe I
kin steal Roxy?"
Here Jack whistled low, shut one eye with deep knowingness, and grinned
behind his bell-crown.
"Oh, you simpleton!" Levin said. "Where could you take her to?"
"Pennsylvany, Cannydy, Turkey, or some of them Abolition states up
thar"—Jack Wonnell indicated the North with his finger. "Ain't there no
place where a white man kin treat a bright-skinned slave like that as if they
both was a Christian?"

"No," answered Levin, "not in this world."
The hero of the bell-crowns was much affected, and Levin thought he really
was whimpering, though his vacant grin was a poor frame for grief.
"Jack," said Levin, "if what Roxy Custis told is true, the gal is the slave of
your pertickler enemy, Meshach Milburn."
The wearer of the rival species of hat was "badly sobered," as Levin
mentally expressed it, at this dismal solution of his gentle dreams of love.
He arose and walked to the bow of the boat, and looked down into the
flying waves over which the cat-boat skipped, as if he might seek the
solution of his own disconnected yet harmless life in the bottom of the
sound, among the oyster rocks.
The water was now speckled with canoes and periaugers (pirogues), and
little sail-boats coming from Deil's Island preaching, and before them rose
out of the bay the low woody islands and capes which, with white straits
between, enclose from the long blue nave of the Chesapeake the scalloped
aisle called Tangier Sound. Like pigeons and wrens around some cathedral,
the wild-fowl flew in these involuted, almost fantastic, architectures of
archipelago and peninsula, which, lying flat to the water, yet took ragged
perspective there, as if some Gothic builder had laid his foundations, but
had not bent the tall pines together, that grew above in palm-like groves, to
make the groined roofs and arches of his design.
Here could be seen the ospreys, sailing in graceful pairs above the herrings'
or the old wives' shoals, taking with elegance and conscientiousness the
daily animal food that even man demands, with all his sentiments and
gospels. There the canvas-back duck, in a little flock, broke the Sabbath to
dive for the wild celery that grows beneath the sound. In yonder tree the
bald eagle was starting out upon his Algerine work of vehemence and piety,
to intercept the hawk and steal his cargo. The wild swan might be those
faint, far birds flying so high over Kedge's Straits, in the south, and the
black loon, spreading his wings like a demon, disappears close to the cat-
boat, and rises no more till memory has forgotten him.
Levin Dennis steered close to a point where he had been wont to scatter
food for the black ducks, and draw them to the gunner's ambush. Sheldrakes

and goosanders, coots and gulls, whifflers and dippers, made the best of
Sunday, and bathed and wrote their winged penmanship on the white sheet
of water.
Poor Jack Wonnell returning, with something on his face between a grin and
a tear, said:
"Levin, didn't I never harm nobody?"
"Not as I ever heard about, Jack. They say you ain't got no sense, but you
never fight nobody. Everybody kin git along with you, Jack!"
"No they can't, Levin. Meshach Milburn hates the ground I tread on. If he
know'd I was in love with little Roxy he'd marry her to a nigger."
"What makes him hate you so, Jack?"
"Becaze I wears my bell-crowns, and he wears the steeple-top hat. He
thinks I'm a-mockin' of him. Levin, I ain't got no other kind of hat to wear.
Meshach Milburn needn't wear that air hat, but if I don't wear a bell-crown I
must go bareheaded. I bought that lot of hats with the only dollar or two I
ever had, as they say a fool an' his money is soon parted. The boys said they
was dirt cheap. Now there wouldn't be nothin' to see wrong in my bell-
crowns, ef all the people wasn't pintin' at ole Milburn's Entail Hat, as they
call it. Why can't he, rich as a Jew, go buy a new hat, or buy me one? I don't
want to mock him. I'm afeard of him! He looks at me with them loaded
pistols of eyes an' it mos' makes me cry, becaze I ain't done nothin'. I'm as
pore as them trash ducks," pointing to a brace of dippers, which were of no
value in the market, "but I ain't got no malice."
"No, Jack. That trader could give you that bag of gold to keep and it would
be safe, becaze it wasn't your own."
"I 'spect I will have to go to the pore-house some day, Levin; my ole aunt,
who takes keer of me, can't live long, an' I ain't good fur nothin'. I can't git
no jobs and I run arrands for everybody fur nothin', but the first money I git
I'm gwyn to buy a new hat with. Ever sence I wore these bell-crowns
Meshach hates me, an' I hope he's the only man that does hate me, Levin. I
don't think Meshach kin be a bad man."

"How kin he be good, Jack?"
"Why, I have seen him in the woods when he didn't see me, calling up the
birds. Danged if they didn't come and git on him! Now birds ain't gwyn to
hop on a man that's a devil, Levin. Do you believe he deals with the devil?"
"I do," said Levin; "I see sich quare things I believe in most anything quare.
These yer tarrapins has got sense, and they're no more like it than a stone.
One night when we hadn't nothin' to eat at home, mother and me, an' she
was a sittin' there with tears in her eyes wonderin' what we'd do next day, I
ree-collected, Levin, that there was four tarrapins down in the cellar,—black
tarrapin, that had been put there six months before. I said to mother: 'I 'spect
them ole tarrapins is dead an' starved, but I'll go see.'
"I found 'em under the wood-pile, an' they didn't smell nor nothin', so I took
'em all four up to mother an' put 'em on the kitchen table befo' the fire, an' I
devilled 'em every way to wake up, an' crawl, and show some signs of life.
No, they was stone dead!
"'Well, mother,' says I, 'put on your bilin' water an' we'll see if dead tarrapin
is fit fur to eat!' She smiled through her cryin', and put the water on, an'
when it began to bubble in the pot, I lifted up one of them tarrapins an'
dropped him in the bilin' water, an' Jack, I'll be dog-goned if them other
three tarrapins didn't run right off the table an' drop on to the flo' an' skeet
for that cellar door!
"I caught 'em an' biled 'em, an' as we sat there eatin' stewed tarrapin without
no salt, or sherry wine, or coffee, or even corn-bread, we heard somethin'
like paper scratchin' on the window, an' mother fell back and clasped her
hands, an' said, 'There, do you hear the ghost?'
"I rushed to the door an' hopped into the yard, an' not a livin' creature did I
see; but there on the window-shelf was packages of salt, coffee, tea, and
flour, and a half a dollar in silver! I run back in the house, white as a ghost
myself, an' I cried out, 'Mother, it's father's sperrit come again!'
"She made me git on my knees an' pray with her to give poor father's spirit
comfort in his home or in heaven!"

Chapter XVII.
SABBATH AND CANOE.

They now approached an island with low bluffs, on which appeared a
considerable village, shining whitely amid the straight brown trunks of a
grove of pine-trees; but no people seemed moving about it, and they saw
but a single vessel at anchor in the thoroughfare or strait they steered into—
a canoe, which revealed on her bow, as they rounded to beside her, a word
neither Levin nor Jack could read, except by hearsay: The Methodist.
"Jack," said Levin, "that was a big pine-tree the parson hewed his canoe
outen. She fell like cannon, going off inter the swamp. She's a'most five
fathom long, an' a man can lie down acrost her. She's to carry the Methodis'
preachers out to the islands."
"Hadn't we better wake him up now?" said Jack Wonnell; "I 'spect you want
a drink, Levin?"
"Yes; I got a thirst on me like fire," Levin exclaimed. "I could do somethin'
wicked now, I 'spect, for a drink of that brandy."
Mooring against the shore, Levin went to his passenger, who was still in
deep sleep stretched upon the bare floor of the hold or cabin—a brawny,
wiry man, with strong chin and long jaws, and his reddish, dark beard
matted with the blood that had spilled from his disfigured eye, and now
disguised nearly one half his face, and gave him a wild, bandit look.
"Cap'n! mister! boss! wake up! We have come to Deil's Island."
The long man, lying on his back, seemed unable to turn over upon his side,
though he muttered in his stirred sleep such words as Levin could not
understand:
"The darbies, Patty! Make haste with them darbies! Put the nippers on her
wrists an' twist 'em. Ha! the mort is dying. Well, to the garden with her!"

At this he awoke, and turned his cold, light eyes on Levin, and leaped to his
feet.
"Did you hear me?" he cried. "It was only nums, kid, and jabber of a nazy
man. Some day this sleep-talk will grow my neck-weed. Don't mind me,
Levin! Come, lush and cock an organ with me, my bene cove!"
"If you mean brandy," Levin said, "I must have some or I'll jump out of my
skin. I feel like the man with the poker was a-comin'."
Joe Johnson gave him the jug and held it up, and the boy drank like one
desperate.
"How the young jagger lushes his jockey," the tall man muttered. "He's in
Job's dock to-day. I'll take no more. A bloody fool I was all yesterday, an'
oaring with my picture-frame. What place is this?"
"Deil's Island, sir."
"Ha! so it is. 'Twas Devil's Island once, till the Methodies changed it fur
politeness. This is the camp-meetin', then? Yer, Wonnell, take this piece of
money, an' go to some house an' fetch us a bite of dinner. We'll wait fur
you."
The tall man led the way to the heart of the grove of pines, where the
seeming town was found—a deserted religious encampment of durable
wooden shells, or huts, in concentric circles of horseshoe shape, and at the
open end of the circle was the preaching-stand, a shed elevated above the
empty benches and pegs of removed benches, and which had a wide shelf
running across the whole front for the preacher's Bible, and to receive his
thwacks as he walked up and down his platform.
It looked a little mysterious now, with the many evidences of a large human
occupation in the recent summer, to see this naked town and hollow pulpit
lying so suggestively under the long moan of the pine-trees, conferring
together like dread angels in council, and expressing at every rising breeze
their impatience with the sins of men.
At times the great branches paused awhile, scarcely murmuring, as if they
were brooding on some question propounded in their council, or listening to

human witnesses below; and then they would gravely converse, as the
regular zephyrs moved in and out among them, and pause again, as if their
decision was almost dreaded by themselves. At intervals, a stern spirit in the
pines would rise and thunder and shake the shafts of the trees, and others
would answer him, and patience would have a season again. And so, with
scarcely ever a silence that remained more than a moment, this council went
on all day, continued all night, was resumed as the sun arose to comfort the
world again, ceased not when the rainbow hung out its perennial assurance
upon the storm, and typified to trembling worshippers the great synod of the
Creator, in everlasting session, ready to smite the world with fire, but
suspending sentence in the evergreen pity of God.
In one of the deserted shells, or "tents," of pine, with neatly shingled roof,
facing the preaching-booth, Joe Johnson and Levin Dennis found benches,
and, at the tall man's example, Levin also lighted a pipe, and looked out
between the escapes of smoke at Tangier Sound, deserted as this camp-
ground on the Sabbath, since the worshippers had reached home from
church in their canoes. He thought of his lonely mother in the town of
Princess Anne, wondering where he was, and of the Sundays fast speeding
by and bringing him to manhood, with no change in their condition for the
better, but penury and disappointment, a vague expectation of the dead to
return, and deeper intemperance of the dead man's son and widow's only
hope. He would have cried out with a sense of misery contagious from the
music of those pines above him, perhaps, if the brandy had not begun to
creep along his veins and shine bold in his large, girlish eyes.
"Levin," said Joe Johnson, "don't you like me?"
"Yes, Mr. Johnson, I think I does, 'cept when you use them quare words I
can't understan'."
"I'm dead struck with you, Levin," Joe Johnson said. "I want to fix you an'
your mother comfortable. You're blood stock, an' ought to be stabled on
gold oats."
He drew the canvas bag of eagles and half-eagles out of his trousers, and
held its mouth open for Levin to feast his eyes.

"Thar," said he, "I told you, Levin, I was a-goin' to give you one of them
purties. I've changed my mind; I'm a-goin' to give you five of 'em!"
"My Lord!" exclaimed Levin; "that's twenty-five dollars, ain't it, sir?"
"Oll korrect, Levin. Five of them finniffs makes a quarter of a hundred
dollars—more posh, Levin, I 'spect, than ever you see."
"I never had but ten, sir, at a time, an' that I put in this boat, and Jimmy
Phœbus put ten to it, an' that paid for her."
"What a stingy pam he was to give you only ten!" Joe Johnson exclaimed,
with disgust. "Ain't I a better friend to ye? Yer, take the money now!"
He pressed the gold pieces ostentatiously upon the boy, who looked at them
with fear, yet fascination.
"What am I to do to earn all this, Mr. Johnson?"
"You comes with me fur a week,—you an' yer boat. I charters you at that
figger!"
"But—mother?"
"Well, when we discharge pigwidgeon, your friend with the bell shape—
Jack Sheep yer—all you got to do, Levin, is to send the hard cole to your
mother by him, sayin', 'Bless you, marm; my wages will excoos my face!'"
"Oh, yes, that will do. Mother will know by the money that I have got a
long job, and not be a 'spectin' of me. When do we sail, cap'n?"
"How fur is it to Prencess Anne? What time to-night kin you make it?"
Levin stepped out of the shanty and looked at the wind and water, his pulses
all a-flutter between the strong brandy and the wonderful gold in his pocket;
and as he watched the veering of the pine-boughs to see which way they
moved, their moaning seemed to be the voice of his widowed mother by her
kitchen fire that day, saying, "He is in trouble. Where is my son? Why stays
he, O my Levin?"
"The tide is on the stand, cap'n, an' will turn in half an hour. It will take us
up the Manokin with this wind by dark, ef we can get water enough in the

thoroughfare without going around by Little Deil's."
Johnson came out and made the same observations on wind and flood.
"I reckon it's eighteen miles to the head of deep water on Manokin, Levin?"
"Not quite, sir, through the thoroughfare; it's nigh eighteen. We've got four
hours and a half of daylight yet."
"Then stand for the head of Manokin an' obey all my orders like a 'listed
man, an' I'll git ye and yer mother a plantation, an' stock it with niggers for
you. Come, brace up again!"
He offered the brandy-jug, and encouraged the boy to drink heartily, and
affected to do the same himself, though it was but a feint.
While they stood in the shelter of the camp cottage going through this
pastime, a voice from near at hand resounded through the woods, and made
their blood stop to circulate for an instant on the arrested heart.
It was a voice making a prayer at a high pitch, as if intended to cover all the
camp-ground and be heard to the outermost bounds. The sincerity of the
sound made Levin Dennis feel that the camp might still be inhabited by
some spiritual congregation which the eyes of profane visitors could not see
—the remainder of the saints, the souls of the converted, or an ethereal host
from above the solemn organ of the pines.
The idea had scarcely seized upon him when a fluttering of wings was
heard, and on the old camp-ground alighted a flock of white wild-geese.
They balanced their large deacon and elder-like bodies upon the empty
seats, and there set up as grave a squawking as if they were singing a hymn,
with that indifferent knowledge of harmony possessed by camp-meeting
choristers.
The accident of their coming—no unusual thing on these exposed islands—
might have made untroubled people only laugh, but it produced the contrary
effect on both our visitors. Levin felt a superstitious fear seize upon him,
and, turning to Joe Johnson, he saw that person with a face so pale that it
showed his blood-gathered eye yet darker and more hideous, like a brand
upon his countenance, gazing upon the late empty preaching-booth.

There Levin, turning his eyes, observed a solitary man kneeling, of a plain
appearance and dress, and with locks of womanly hair falling carelessly
upon a large and almost noble forehead, his arms raised to heaven and his
voice flowing out in a mellow stream of supplication, in the intervals of
which the geese could be heard quacking aloud and paddling their wings as
they balanced and hopped over the camp-meeting arena.
"Who's he a prayin' to?" Levin asked of Joe Johnson.
"Quemar!" muttered Johnson, as if he were terrified at something; "his
potato-trap is swallerin' ghosts! Curse on the swaddler? The kid will
whindle directly. Come, boy, come!"
At this, seizing Levin's hand, partly in persuasion, partly as if he wanted the
lad's protection, Johnson, fairly trembling, ran for the boat.
Levin was frightened too; the more that he saw the stronger man's fear. As
they dashed across the camp-ground the wild-geese took alarm, and, some
running, some flying, scudded towards the Sound. A voice from the pulpit
cried after the retreating men, but only to increase their fears, and when
they leaped on board the Ellenora, Joe Johnson was livid with terror. He ran
partly down the companion-way and stopped to look back: the wild-geese
were now spreading their wings like a fleet of fleecy sails, and fluttering
down the sound in gallant convoy.
"What did you run for?" Levin said; "the jug of brandy is left. It was only
Parson Thomas!"
"You run first," the man replied, gasping for breath, and a little ashamed.
"What did he preach at me fur?"
"That's the parson of the islands," Levin said; "he started Deil's Island
camp-meetin' last year, an' his favo-rite preacher dyin' jess as he got it done,
ole Pap Thomas, who lives yer, comes out to the preachin'-stand sometimes
alone, an' has a cry and a prayer. The geese scared me, cap'n."
"Push off!" ordered Joe Johnson; "my teeth are most a-chatterin' with the
chill that mace cove give me."

He pulled up the anchor, hoisted the jib, and showed such nervous
apprehension that Levin subsided to managing the helm, and steered down
the thoroughfare, or strait, which, for some distance, wound around the
camp-meeting grove.
"Yer's Jack Wonnell comin' with the jug and the dinner. Sha'n't we wait fur
him?"
"He's got the kingdom-come cove with him! No; stop for nothing."
But the boat had to stop, as her keel scraped the mud in the almost dry
thoroughfare, and a plain island man of benevolent, nearly credulous, face,
hailed them, saying, stutteringly:
"Ne-ne-neighbors, do-don't be sc-scared that a-way. We ain't he-eee-thens
yer. Br-br-brother Wonnell's bringin' your taters and pone."
"Come on, an' be damned to you?" Johnson cried to Wonnell. "What do we
want with this tolabon sauce?"
"Sw-w-wear not a-a-at all!" cried the parson of the islands. "'Twon't l-l-lift
ye over l-l-low tide, brother. Stay an' eat, an' t-t-talk a little with us. Why, I
have seen that f-f-face before!"
"Never in a gospel-ken before," the slave-dealer muttered, with an oath.
"B-but it can't be him," spoke the island parson, with solemnity. "Ole
Ebenezer Johnson died s-s-several year ago."
"Who was he?" cried the slave-dealer, with a little respectful interest.
"Ebenez-z-zer Johnson," Parson Thomas replied, with a mild and credulous
countenance, "was the wickedest man on the Eastern Sho' for twenty year.
P-pardon me, brother, fur a likin' ye to him, but somethin' in ye y-y-yur,"
passing his hand upon his skull, "p-puts me in mind of him. It was hyur he
was shot"—still keeping his hand upon the skull—"through an' through, an'
died the death of the sinner. I have p-p-put my f-finger through the two
holes where the b-bullet come an' went, an' rid this w-world of a d-d-
demon!"

The story appeared to have a fascination for the slave-buyer, Levin Dennis
thought, and Johnson exclaimed:
"Well, hod, did he ever run afoul of you?"
"O y-y-yes," answered the genial island exhorter, with obliging loquacity;
"it was tw-w-enty-s-seven year ago that I see ole Eben-nezer Johnson come
on the camp-ground of P-p-pungoteague with a mob of p-p-pirates to break
up the f-f-fust Methodies camp-meetin' ever held about these sounds. He
was en-c-couraged by ole King Custis, f-f-father of our Daniel Custis, of
Prencess Anne, who was a b-b-big man fur the Establish Church an' d-
dispised the Methodies. It was a cowardly thing to do, but while King C-C-
Custis laughed and talked a' durin' of the p-p-preachin', Eb-b-b-benezer
Johnson started a fight. The preacher c-c-cut his eye and saw who was a w-
w-winkin' at the interference. He was a l-l-lion of the L-l-lord, and bore the
c-c-commission of Immanuel. He knowed he was outen the s-s-state of
Maryland and over in the V-v-vergeenia county of Ac-c-comack, an' that if
the l-l-aws was a little more t-t-tolerant sence the Revolutionary war the ar-
r-ristocracy there was b-bitter as ever towards the people of the Lord. He t-
t-urned from his preachin' at last, right on King Custis, an' he pinted his f-
finger at him straight. The p-preacher was L-l-lorenzo Dow."
"Wheoo!" Jack Wonnell exclaimed, with a coinciding grin; "I've hearn of
him: a Yankee-faced feller, like a woman, with long braids an' curls of hair
fallin' around of his breast an' back, and a ole straw hat, rain or shine."
"That was L-l-lorenzo Dow," the parson of the islands said. "He turned on
K-k-king Custis and screamed, 'W-who art thou? The L-lord shall smite
thee, w-whited sepulchre, and m-mock thee in thy ch-h-hildren's children,
thou A-a-a-hab and thy J-j-jezebel!' It was King Custis's wife he pinted at,
too, the greatest lady and heiress in V-v-virgeenia. Sh-h-e f-f-ainted in f-fear
or r-rage to hear the prophecy and insult of her. Then, turning on Eb-b-
benezer Johnson, Lorenzo Dow cried out, 'The dogs shall lie buried safer
than his bones. Lay hold of him, brethren!' And s-something in Lorenzo
Dow's t-trumpet-blast made every M-methodis' a giant. They s-swept on
Ebenezer Johnson, the bully of thr-ree states, an' beat him to the ground, an'
raced his band to their boats, an' then they th-hrew him into a little j-j-jail
they had on the camp-ground, f-for safe keeping."

"What did King Custis do then, Pappy Thomas?" asked Levin.
"Why, brethren, what did he do but use his f-f-family influence to g-git out
a warrant for the preacher and his m-managers, on the ground of f-false
imprisonment and s-slander! Lorenzo Dow got over into Maryland s-safe
from the warrant, but our p-presiding elder was p-put in jail till he could p-
pay two thousand dollars fine. It almost beggared the poor Methodies of
that day to raise so much money, but g-glory be to G-god! we can raise it
now any day in the year, and in the next g-generation we can buy our p-
persecutors."
"So Ebenezer Johnson, accordin' to the autum bawler's patter, got popped in
the mazzard, my brother of the surplice? But he didn't climb no ladder, did
he?"
The stuttering host seemed not to comprehend this sneering exclamation,
and Levin Dennis said:
"King Custis wasn't killed, was he, Pappy Thomas?"
"It was his children's children his p-p-punishment was promised to," the
island parson said, "and to the Lord a thousand y-years are but as d-days."
"The tide is fuller, Levin," Joe Johnson cried, "your keel is clear. Now pint
her for Manokin. So bingavast, my benen cove, and may you chant all by
yourself when I am gone!"
"God bless the boys!" the islander cried, "an' k-keep them from the f-fire
everlasting that is burning in your jug. And s-s-stranger, remember the end
of Eb-b-benezer Johnson, an' repent!"
The old man, barefooted, stoop-shouldered, stuttering, yet with a chord of
natural rhetoric in his high fiddle-string of a windpipe, stood looking after
them till they passed down the thoroughfare under the jib-sail, and Joe
Johnson did not say a word till some marsh brush intervened between them,
he being apparently under a remnant of that panic which had seized him on
the camp-ground.
"That's a good man," Levin Dennis said, giving the tiller to Jack Wonnell
and raising the sail; "he preached to the Britishers when they sailed from

Tangiers Islands to take Baltimore, and told 'em they would be beat an' their
gineral killed. He's made the oystermen all round yer jine the island
churches an' keep Sunday. That stutterin' leaves him when he preaches, and
when he leads the shout in meetin' it's piercin' as a horn."
"He's a bloody Romany rogue," Joe Johnson muttered, "to tell me such a
tale! But, kirjalis! he cursed not me!"
"What language is that, Mr. Johnson? Is it Dutch or Porteygee?"
"It's what we call the gypsy; some calls it the Quaker. It's convenient,
Levin, when you go to Philadelfey, or Washinton, or New York, or some o'
them big cities, an' wants to talk to men of enterprise without the quails a-
pipin' of you. Some day I'll larn it to you if you're a good boy."
They now sailed out of the thoroughfare into the broad mouth of the
Manokin, where a calm fell upon air and water for a little while, and they
could hear smothered music, as of drum-fish beneath the water, beating,
"thum! thum!" and crabs and alewives rose to the surface around them,
chased by the tailor-fish. The cat-boat drifted into the mouth of a creek
where rock and perch were running on the top of the water, and with the
tongs Jack Wonnell raised half a bushel of oysters in a few dips, and opened
them for the party. Along the shores wild haws and wild plums still adhered
to the bushes, and the stiff-branched persimmon-trees bore thousands of
their tomato-like fruit. The partridges were chirping in the corn, the crow
blackbirds held a funeral feast around the fodder, some old-time bayside
mansions stretched their long sides and speckled negro quarters along the
inlets, half hidden by the nut-trees, and in the air soared the turkey-buzzard,
like a voluptuary politician, taking beauty from nothing but his lofty station.
"The ole Eastern Sho'," Jack Wonnell said, with his animated vacancy, "is
jess stuffed with good things, Cap'n Johnsin. You kin fall ovaboard most
anywhair an' git a full meal. You kin catch a bucket of crabs with a piece of
a candle befo' breakfast, an' shoot a wild-duck mos' with your eyes shet."
"This country's good for nothin'," Joe Johnson said. "Floredey is the land!
Wot kin a nigger earn for yer? Corn, taters, melons: faugh! Tobacco is a
givin' out, cotton won't live yer. But Floredey is the hell-dorader of the
yearth."

"What's the hell-dorader?" asked Levin.
"That's Spanish or Porteygee for cheap niggers an' cotton," cried the trader.
"Cotton's the bird!"
"I thought cotton was a wool," Levin said.
"No, boy, cotton is a plant, growin' like a raspberry on a bush, havin' pushed
the blossoms off an' burst the pods below 'em, an' thar it is fur niggers to
pick it. Thar's a Yankee in Georgey made a cotton-gin to gin it clean, an'
now all the world wants some of it."
"Some of the gin?" asked the irrelevant Wonnell.
"No, some of the cotton, Doctor Green! They can't git enough of it. Eurip is
crazy about it, but there ain't niggers enough to pick it all. So I'm in the
nigger trade an' tryin' to be useful to my country, an' wot does I git fur it? I
git looked down on, an' a nigger's pertected fur a-topperin' of me! But never
mind, I'll be a big skull yet, an' keep my kerrige—in Floredey."
"What's Floredey good fur?" Levin asked.
"It's full of nigger Injins, Simminoles, every one of 'em goin' to be caught
an' branded, an' put at cotton an' tobakker plantin', an' hog an' cow herdin'.
More niggers will be run in from Cubey, an' all the free niggers in Delaware
and up North will be sold, an' you an' me, Levin, is gwyn to own a drove of
'em an' have a orchard of oranges an' a thousand acres of cotton in bloom.
We'll hold our heads up. Your mother shall be switched to a nabob. My wife
will be a shakester in diamonds. We'll dispise Cambridge an' Princess Anne,
an' there sha'n't be a free nigger left on the face of the earth. We'll swig to
it!"
The sick-headed yet fancy-ridden Levin drank again, and listened to the
dealer's marvellous tales of golden fruit on coasts of indigo, and palms that
sheltered parrots calling to the wild deer. Jack Wonnell took the helm when
Levin lay down to sleep in the little cabin, still lulled by tales of wealth and
lawless daring, and there he slept the deep sleep of the castaway, when the
vessel grounded at dusk, in the sound of evening church-bells, at Princess
Anne.

"Let him sleep," Joe Johnson spoke; "yer, Wonnell, I give you tray of his
strangers to take to his mommy," handing out three gold pieces. "Don't you
forgit it! Yer's a syebuck fur you," giving Jack a sixpence. "You an' me will
part company at Prencess Anne."

Chapter XVIII.
UNDER AN OLD BONNET.

Vesta had been sitting half an hour beside her unconscious husband,
listening to his broken speech, and thinking upon the rapidity of events once
started on their course, like eaglets scarcely taught to fly before they attack
and kill, when the sound of carriage-wheels, arrested at the door, called her
to the window, and Tom, the mocking-bird, which had been comparatively
quiet since he found his master snugly cared for, now began to hop about,
fly in the air, and sing again:
"Sweet—sweet—sweetie! come see! come see!"
Vesta saw Meshach's wiry, deliberate colored man step down and turn the
horses' heads, and there dropped from the carriage, without using the
carriage-step, at a leap and a skip, a young female object whose head was
invisible in an enormous coal-scuttle bonnet of figured blue chintz.
However quick she executed the leap, Vesta observed that the arrival had
forgotten to put on her stockings.
Before Vesta could turn from the window this singular object had darted up
the dark stairs of the old storehouse and thrown herself on the delirious
man's bed:
"Uncle, Uncle Meshach! air you dead, uncle? Wake up and kiss your
Rhudy!"
She had kissed her uncle plentifully while awaiting the same of him, and
the attack a little excited him, without recalling his mind to any sustained
remembrance, though Vesta heard the words "dear child," before he turned
his head and chased the wild poppies again. Then the young female,
ejaculating,
"Lord sakes! Uncle don't know his Rhudy!" pulled her black apron over her
head and had a silent cry—a little convulsion of the neck and not an audible

sigh besides.
"She weeps with some refinement," Vesta thought; and also observed that
the visitor was a tall, long-fingered, rather sightly girl of, probably,
seventeen, with clothing the mantuamaker was guiltless of, and a hoop
bonnet, such as old people continued to make in remembrance of the high-
decked vessels which had brought the last styles to them when their
ancestors emigrated with their all, and forever, from a land of modes. The
bonnet was a remarkable object to Vesta, though she had seen some such at
a distance, coining in upon the heads of the forest people to the Methodist
church. It resembled the high-pooped ship of Columbus, which he had built
so high on purpose, the girls at the seminary said, so as to have the
advantage of spying the New World first; but it also resembled the long,
hollow, bow-shaped Conestoga wagons of which Vesta had seen so many
going past her boarding-school at Ellicott's Mills before the late new
railroad had quite reached there. As she had often peered into those vast,
blue-bodied wagons to see what creatures might be passengers in their
depths, so she took the first opportunity of the blue scuttle being jolted up
by the mourner to discern the face within.
It was a pretty face, with a pair of feeling and also mischievous brown eyes,
set in the attitude of wonder the moment they observed another woman in
the room. The skin was pale, the mouth generous, the nose long, like
Milburn's, but not so emphatic, and the neck, brow, and form of the face
longish, and with something fine amid the wild, cow-like stare she fixed on
Vesta, exclaiming, in a whisper,
"Lord sakes! a lady's yer!"
Then she threw her apron over the Conestoga bonnet again, and held it up
there with her long fingers, and long, plump, weather-stained wrists.
Vesta looked on with the first symptoms of amusement she had felt since
the morning she and her mother laughed at the steeple-crown hat, as they
looked down from the windows of Teackle Hall upon the man already her
husband. That morning seemed a year ago; it was but yesterday.
"Old hats and bonnets," Vesta thought, "will be no novelties to me by and
by. This family of the Milburns is full of them."

Then, addressing the new arrival, Vesta said,
"This is your uncle, then? Where do you live?"
"I live at Nu Ark," answered the miss, taking down the black apron and
looking from the depths of the bonnet, like a guinea-pig from his hole.
"If she had said 'the Ark' without the 'New,'" Vesta thought, "it would have
seemed natural."
"Your uncle has a high fever," Vesta said, kindly; "he is not in danger, we
think. It was right of you to come, however. Now take off your bonnet.
What is your name?"
"Rhudy—I'm Rhudy Hullin, ma'am."
"Rhoda—Rhoda Holland, I think you say."
"Yes'm, Rhudy Hullin. I live crost the Pookamuke, on the Oushin side, out
thar by Sinepuxin. I don't live in a great big town like Princess Anne; I live
in Nu Ark."
At this the girl carefully extricated her head from the Conestoga scuttle,
looked all over the bonnet with pride and anxiety, and then carefully laid it
on the top of her uncle's hat-box.
"Uncle Meshach give it to me," she said, with a sly inclination towards the
sick bed. "Misc Somers made it. Uncle, he bought all the stuff; Misc
Somers draw'd it. Did you ever see anything like it?"
"Never," said Vesta.
"Well, some folks out Sinepuxin said it was a sin and a shame—sech
extravagins; but Misc Somers she said Uncle Meshach was rich an' hadn't
but one Rhudy. It ain't quite as big as Misc Somers's bonnet, but it's draw'd
mour."
Here Rhoda gave a repetition of what Vesta had twice before observed—an
inaudible sniffle, and, being caught in it, wiped her nose on her apron.
"Take my handkerchief," Vesta said, "you are cold," and passed over her
cambric with a lace border.

"What's it fur?" Rhoda asked, looking at it superstitiously. "You don't wipe
your nuse on it, do you? Lord sakes! ain't it a piece of your neck fixin'?"
Vesta felt in a good humor to see this weed of nature turn the handkerchief
over and hold it by the thumb and finger, as if she might become
accountable for anything that might happen to it.
"I got two of these yer," she said; "Misc Somers made 'em outen a frock.
They ain't got this starch on 'em; they're great big things. I always forgit
'em. My nuse wipes itself."
"Now come near the fire and warm your feet," said Vesta; "for your ride
from the oceanside, this cold morning, through the forests of the Pocomoke,
must have chilled you through. Lay off your blanket shawl."
Rhoda laid the huge black and green shawl, that reached to her feet, on the
green chest, and smoothed it with evident pride.
"Uncle Meshach bought that in Wilminton," she said; "ain't it beautiful! I
never wear it but when I come over yer or go to Snow Hill. Snow Hill's
sech a proud place!"
She had a way of laughing, by merely indenting her cheeks, without a
sound, just as she expressed the sense of pain; the only difference being in
the beaming of her eyes; and Vesta thought it had something contagious in
it. She would laugh broadly and in silence, as if she had been put on
behavior in church, and there had adopted a grimace to make the other girls
laugh and save herself the suspicion.
As she pulled her skirts down to her feet, Vesta's observation was confirmed
that Rhoda had no stockings on, and she could not help exclaiming,
"My dear child, what possessed you to ride this October morning only half
dressed? You might catch your death."
Rhoda caught her nose on the half sniffle, raised and dimpled her cheeks in
a sly laugh, and cried,
"Lord sakes! you mean my legs? Why, I ain't got but two pairs of stockings,
an' Misc Somers is a wearin' one of' em, and the ould pair's in the wash. It's

so tejus to knit stockings, and sech fun to go barefoot, that I don't wear' em
unless Misc Somers finds it out. Why, the boys can't see me!"
She grimaced again so naturally and engagingly that Vesta had to laugh
quite aloud, and saw meantime that the young woman's oft-cobbled shoes
covered a slender foot a lady might have envied.
"Now, Rhoda," Vesta said, almost indignantly, "why did you not ask your
wealthy uncle for some good yarn stockings?"
"Him? Why, ma'am, he's got so many pore kin, if he begin to give' em all
stockings, he'd go barefoot himself."
"Has he other nieces like you?"
"No." The girl quietly grimaced, with her brown eyes full of laughter.
"There's plenty of others, but none like Rhudy; the woods is full of them
others."
"So you are the favorite? Now, what was your uncle going to do with all his
money?"
"Lord sakes!" Rhoda said; "he was going to marry Miss Vesty with it. That's
what Misc Somers said."
The mocking-bird had been striking up once or twice in the conversation,
and now pealed his note loud:
"Vesta, she! she! she! she-ee-ee!"
A tingle of that superstition she had felt more than once already, in her brief
knowledge of this forest family, went through Vesta's veins and nerves, and
she silently remarked,
"How little a young girl knows of men around her—what satyrs are taking
her image to their arms! These people knew he loved me, when I knew not
that he ever saw me."
She addressed the niece again:
"Rhoda, did your uncle say he loved Miss Vesta?"

"No'm. He never said he luved nothing; but I heard Tom, the mocking-bird,
shout 'Vesty,' and saw a lady's picture yonder between grandpar and
grandmem, and told Misc Somers, and she says, 'Your Uncle Meshach's in
luve!' Oh, I was right glad of it, because he was so sad and lonesome!"
The fountain of sympathy burst up again in Vesta's heart, and she felt that
there were compensations riches and station knew not of in humble
alliances like hers.
"Rhoda," she said, going to the young girl and putting her hand upon her
soft brown hair, "you have not noticed the new picture of a lady hanging up
here, have you?"
"No'm, not yet. Everything is so quare in this room sence I saw it last, I
hain't seen nothin' in it but you. Now I see the carpet, an' the brass andirons,
an' the chiney, an'—Lord sakes! is that a picture? Why, I thought it was
you."
"It is, Rhoda. I am Vesta; I am your new aunt."
The girl made one of her engaging, dimpled, silent laughs, as if by stealth
again, changed it into a silent cry by a revulsion as natural, and rose to her
feet and took Vesta in her arms.
"I'm so glad, I will cry a little," Rhoda simpered, her eyes all dewy; "oh,
how Misc Somers will say, 'I found it out first!'"
Tom kept up a whistling, self-gratulating little cry, as if he had his own
thoughts:
"Sweety! sweety! sweet! Vesty, see! see! see!"
Vesta felt a chain of happy thoughts arise in her mind, which she expressed
as frankly as the girl of forest product had spoken, that she might not retard
the welcome of these homely friendships:
"Yes, Rhoda, I am thankful to find a social life open to me where there
seemed no way, and brooks and playmates where everything looked dry.
You come here like a sunbeam, God bless you! I can hear you talk, and
teach you what little I know, and we will relieve each other, watching him."

She felt a slight modification of her joy at this reminder, but the bird
seemed to teach her patience, as he suggested, hopping and flying in the air,
"Come see! come see! come see!"
"Yes," thought Vesta, "come and see! It is good counsel. I begin to feel the
breaking of a new sense,—curiosity about the poor and lowly. My
education seems to have closed my observation on people of my own race,
who daily trode almost upon my skirts, and whom I never saw—whom it
was considered respectable not to see—while even my colored servants
enjoyed my whole confidence because they were my slaves. Yet, in
misfortune, to these plain white people I must have dropped; and then Roxy
and Virgie, sold to some temporary rich man, would have been above me,
slaves as they would continue! How false, how fatal, both slavery and
proud riches to the republicans we pretend to be! Compelled 'to see' at last,
I shall not close my eyes nor harden my heart."
The maid from Newark had meantime quietly inspected the rag carpet, the
cloth hangings, the fairy rocker, and all the acquisitions of her uncle's
abode, and Vesta again observed that she was of slender and willowy shape
and motion, unaffected in anything, not forward nor excited, and with the
shrewd look so near ready wit that she could make Vesta laugh almost at
will. Vesta showed her how to administer cool drink and the sponging to the
sufferer, and he saw them together with a look of inquiry which the febrile
action soon drove away.
"Are your parents living, Rhoda?"
"No'm; they're both dead. My mother was Uncle Meshach's sister, and she
married a rich man, who biled salt and had vessels an' kept tavern. Father
Hullin died of the pilmonary; mar died next. Misc Somers brought me up
whar the tavern used to be. It ain't a stand no more. Uncle Meshach owns
it."
"Is it a nice place?"
"Now it ain't as nice as it use to be, Aunt Vesty"—the girl glided easily over
what Vesta thought might be a hard word—"sence the shews don't stop thar
no mour."

"The shoes? What is that?"
"The wax figgers and glass-blowers, and the strongis' man in the world. Did
you ever see him?"
Vesta said, "No, dear."
"I saw him," Rhoda said, with a compression of her mouth and a gleam of
her eyes. "He bruke a stone with his fist and Misc Somers kep the stone,
and what do you think it was?"
"Marble?"
"No'm; chork! He jest washed the chork over with a little shell or varnish or
something, and, of course, it bruke right easy; so he wasn't the strongest
man in the world at all, and if Misc Somers ever see him, she'll tell him so."
"Is it a little or a large house, Rhoda?"
"Oh, it's a magnificins house, twice as big as this, with the roof bent like an
elefin's back, an' three windows in it—rale dormant windows, that looks
like three eyes outen a crab, and a gabil end three rows of windows high,
and four high chimneys. The rope-walker said it was fit to be a rueyal
palace. Then thar's the kitchen an' colonnade built on to it. It's the biggest
house, I reckon, about Sinepuxin. That rope-walker's a mountin-bank."
"A mountain bank? You mean a mountebank—an impostor?"
"Yes'm,"—the mouth shut and the eyes flashed again. "He allowed he'd
break the rupe after he'd walked on it, and he said it wasn't stretched tight
enough, and went along a feeling of it; and Misc Somers found out every
time he teched of it he put on some bluestone water or somethin' else to rot
it, so, of course, he bruke it easy. But Misc Somers's going to tell him, if he
comes agin, he's a mountin-bank. Lord sakes! she ain't afraid."
"So, since it has ceased to be a tavern, dear, you see no more jugglers?"
"The last shew there," Rhoda said, "was the canninbils and the missionary.
The missionary had converted of 'em, and they didn't eat no more; but he
tuld how they used to eat people; and they stouled a pony outen the stables
an' run to the Cypress swamp, and thar they turned out to be some shingle

sawyers he'd just a stained up. Misc Somers is a-waitin' for him. Lord
sakes! she don't keer."
"And so you were an orphan, brought up at the old roadside stage-house at
Newark? And who is Mrs. Somers?"
"Misc Somers, she's a ole aunt of Par Hullin. She an' me live together sence
par and mar died of the pilmonary. Oh, I have a passel of beaus that takes
me over to the Oushin on Sinepuxin beach, outen the way of the skeeters,
an' thar we wades and sails, and biles salt and roasts mammynoes. Aunt
Vesty, I can cut out most any girl from her beau; but, Lord sakes! I ain't
found no man I love yet."
"I'm glad of that," said Vesta, "because you will then be satisfied with
Princess Anne. They say your uncle will be sick here several weeks, and we
can help each other to make him well. Now he is waking."
Milburn opened his eyes and sighed, and saw them together, and Rhoda
held back considerately while the young wife approached the bed. He
looked at her with a bewildered doubt.
"I thought they said you had gone forever," he murmured.
"No, I am come forever, or until you wish me gone."
"I told them so," he sighed; "I said, 'She has high principle, though she can't
love me.'"
"Uncle Meshach, give Auntie time!" cried Rhoda, with a quick divination of
something unsettled or misunderstood. "Don't you know your Rhudy? Even
I was afraid of you till I was tuke sick and you thought it was the pilmonary
and nursed me."
"You have a good niece," Vesta said, as her husband kissed the stranger;
"and we shall love each other, I hope, and improve each other."
"Yes, that will be noble," he replied. "Teach her something; I have never
had the time. Oh, I am very ill; at a time like this, too!"
"Be composed, Mr. Milburn," the bride said; "it is only Nature taking the
time you would not give her, and which she means for us to improve our

almost violent acquaintance. I shall be very happy sitting here, and wish
you would let your niece be with me; I desire it."
He tried to smile, though the strong sweat succeeding the fever broke upon
him from his hands to his face.
"She is yours," he said; "the best of my poor kin. Do not despise us!"
Vesta drew her arm around Rhoda and kissed her, that he might see it.
"What goodness!" he sighed, and the opening of his pores, as it let the fever
escape, gave him a feeling of drowsy relief which Vesta understood.
"Now let us turn the covers under the edges, Rhoda," she said, "and put
your blanket-shawl over him, and he will get some natural sleep."
He turned once, as if to see if she was there, and closed his eyes peacefully
as a child.
"Now, Rhoda," said Vesta, in a few minutes, "I hear papa's carriage at the
door, and, while he comes up, I shall ride back to see my mother and get a
few things at home."
"Who is your poppy, Aunt Vesty?"
"Don't you know him?—Judge Custis, who lives in Princess Anne."
"Jedge Custis! Why, Lord sakes! he ain't your par, is he? Aunt Vesty, he's
one of my old beaus."
The Judge brought with him Reverend William Tilghman, and Vesta, as she
was retiring, introduced Rhoda to both of them:
"This is Miss Rhoda—Mr. Milburn's niece."
Judge Custis, a trifle blushing, took both of Rhoda's hands:
"Ha, my pretty partner and dancing pupil! How are our friends at St.
Martin's Bay and Sinepuxent? Many a sail and clam-bake we have had,
Rhoda."

"You're a deceiver," Rhoda cried, with a dimpling somewhere between glee
and accusation. "I'm goin' to plosecute you, Jedge, fur not tellin' of me you
was a married man. My heart's bruke."
"Who could remember what he was, Rhoda, sitting all that evening beside
you at—where was it?"
"The Blohemian glass-blowers," Rhoda cried; "the only ones that ever
visited the Western Himisfure. Jedge," with sudden impetuosity, "that little
one, with the copper rings in his years, wasn't a Blohemian at all. He lived
up at Cape Hinlupen, an' Misc Somers see him thar when she was a buyin'
of herring thar. She's goin' to tell him, when she catches him at Nu-ark."
The young rector observed the flash of those bright eyes following the
pleasing dimples, and the slips of orthography seemed to him never less
culpable coming from such lips and teeth.
"William," said Vesta, "come around this afternoon, and let us have our
usual Sunday reading-circle. Mr. Milburn will be awake and appreciate it,
as he is one of your most regular parishioners. Rhoda, you can read?"
"Oh, yes'm. Misc Somers, she's a good reader. She reads the Old Testamins.
The names thar is mos' too long for me, but I reads the Psalms an' the
Ploverbs right well."
"Very well, then, we will read verse about, so that Mr. Milburn can hear
both our voices and his favorite minister's, too. You'll come, papa?"
"Yes, if I can. We have had a love-feast at Teackle Hall this morning, and
your sister from Talbot is down, but I think I can get off."
"Lord sakes!" Rhoda said, looking at Mr. Tilghman candidly; "you ain't a
minister now? Not a minister of the Gospil?"
"Unworthily so, Miss Rhoda."
"Well, I don't see how you was old enough to be convicted and learn it all,
unless you was a speretual merikle. Misc Somers see one of 'em at Jinkotig.
They called him the enfant phrenomeny. He exhorted at five year old, and at
seven give his experyins."

"Rare, Miss Rhoda," the rector said, hardly able to keep his reverence in
amusement at her impetuosity.
"Oh, he made a wild excitemins, Aunt Vesty. The women give each other
their babies to hold while they tuk turns a-shouting. 'Yer, Becky, hold my
baby while I shout!' says one. 'Now, Nancy, hold mine while I shout!' To see
that little boy up thar tellin' of his experyins was meriklus, an' made an
excitemins like the high tides on Jinkotig that drowns' em out. But, Aunt
Vesty, that little phrenomeny was a dwarf, twenty year old, an' Misc Somers
found it out and told about it."
"I'll be bound Mrs. Somers knows!" exclaimed the Judge.
"That she do," continued Rhoda, earnestly, with a slight sniffle of a well-
modelled nose and a dimpling that argued to Vesta something to come.
"Misc Somers says you held one of them babies, Jedge, to let its mother
shout, and pretended to be under a conviction; an' that you backslid right
thar and was a-whisperin' to the other mother. Lord sakes! Misc Somers
finds it all out."
"Well," said the Judge, finding the laugh against him, "I never did better
electioneering than that day. By holding that baby five minutes I made a
vote, and the mother will hold it twenty years before she will make a vote."
"Misc Somers says, Jedge, you hold the women longer than thar babies; but
I told her you was in sech conviction you didn't know one from the other.
'Oh,' she says, 'he's sly and safe when he gits over yer on the Worcester
side.' Misc Somers, she's dreadful plain."
William Tilghman, during the continuation of this colloquy, looked with
interest on the two young ladies: Vesta, the elder by two or three years, and
richly endowed with the lights of both beauty and accomplishments; the
maid from the ocean side, plainer, and with no ornament within or without;
but he could foresee, under Vesta's fostering, a graceful woman, with
coquetry and fascination not wholly latent there; and, as his eyes met
Rhoda's, he interpreted the look that at a certain time of life almost every
maiden casts on meeting a young man—"Is he single?" She shot this look
so archly, yet so strong, that the arrow wounded him a very little as it
glanced off. He smiled, but the consciousness was restored a moment that

he was a young man still, as well as a priest. Love, which had closed a door
like the portal of a tomb against him, began to come forth like a glow-worm
and wink its lamp athwart the dark.
"She must come to Sunday-school," he thought, "if she stays in Princess
Anne. We will polish her."
The mocking-bird, not being satisfied with any lull in the conversation,
"pearted up," as he saw Vesta withdraw, and cried,
"'Sband! 'Sband! Meee—shack! Mee-ee-ee-shack! See me! see me! Gents!
gents! gents! genten! Sweet! sweetie! sweetie! Hoo! hoo! See! see! Vesty,
she! Ha! ha!"
He flew in the air over his stirring master, as if doubting that all was well
since the strange lady, who had been so quiet all the morning, was gone.
"That bird almost speaks," said William Tilghman; "I have spent many an
hour teaching them, but never could make one talk like that."
"Maybe you had too much to teach to it," Rhoda Holland said; "it ain't often
they can speak, and they mustn't have much company to learn well. Uncle
Meshach haint had no company but that bird for years. I reckon the bird got
mad and lonesome, and jest hooted words at him."
"What is it saying now?" Tilghman asked. "See! it is almost convulsive in
its attempts to say something."
The gray bird, as impressive as a poor poet, seemed nearly in a state of
epilepsy to bring up some burden of oppressive sound, and, as they watched
it, almost tipsy with the intoxicant of speech, fluttering, driving, and
striking in the air, it suddenly brought out a note liquid as gurgling snow
from a bird-cote spout:
"L-l-lo-love! love! love! Ha! ha! L-l-love!"
"Well done, old bachelor!" Judge Custis remarked, in spite of his fagged
face, for good resolution and yesterday's unbracing had left him somewhat
limp and haggard still. "He brings out 'love' as if he had made a vow against
it, but the confession had to come. Many a monk would sing the same if
instinct could find a daring word in his chorals. These mockers of Maryland

were celebrated in the British magazines a hundred years ago, and I recall
some lines about them."
He then recited:
"'His breast whose plumes a cheerful white display,
His quivering wings are dressed in sober gray,
Sure all the Muses this their bird inspire,
And he alone is equal to a choir.
Oh, sweet musician! thou dost far excel
The soothing song of pleasing Philomel:
Sweet is her song, but in few notes confined,
But thine, thou mimic of the feathery kind!
Runs thro' all notes: thou only know'st them all,
At once the copy and th' original!'"
"That's magnificins!" Rhoda exclaimed, with quiet delight; "who is 'fellow
Mil,' Jedge?"
"Oh, that's the British nightingale. These American mocking-birds surpass
them as one of our Eastern Shore clippers outsails all the naval powers of
Europe."
"I've hearn 'The British Nightingale,'" Rhoda said, with a flash of her eyes;
"he was a blind man with green specticklers that sang at Nu-ark, ''ome,
sweet 'ome'—that's the way he plonounced it—an' it affected of him so, he
had to drink a whole tumbler of water, an' Misc Somers, spying around to
see if he was the rale nightingale, she found it was gin in that glass, and told
about it."
Rhoda made even the minister laugh, as she indented her cheeks and cast a
sheep's glance at him and the Judge. He marvelled that such forest English
could be resented so little by his mind, but he thought,
"Never mind, she may have had no more lessons than the bird, whose
difficulty is even beautiful. But see! Mr. Milburn is wide awake. My friend,
how do you feel?"
"Better, better!" murmured Milburn. "I cannot lie here any more. There is
money, money, gentlemen, dependent on my getting about."

He started up with the greatest resolution and confidence, and fell upon his
head before he had left the coverlets.
"No, no!" said the Judge, as he and Tilghman picked Milburn up and
arranged him as before. "Your will is matched this time, my brave son-in-
law! You are back in the hut you have consumed, among the fires thereof,
and the avenging blast of Nassawongo furnace burns in your veins and
cools you in the mill-pond alternately. Lie there and repent for the injury
you have done a spotless one!"
If Meshach heard this it was never known, but the unconscious or impulsive
utterance strengthened the impression with Tilghman and Rhoda that Vesta's
marriage was not altogether voluntary, and produced on both a feeling of
deeper sympathy and respect for her.
"Judge," the young minister said, "do good for evil, if evil there has been! I
have given him my hand sincerely; perhaps you can relieve his mind of
some business care."
"Mr. Milburn," the Judge said, when he saw the resinous eyes roll towards
him again out of that swarthy face, now pale with weakness, "I am out of a
job now, and can work cheap. Let me do any errand for you."
A look of petulance, followed by one of inquiry, came up from Milburn's
eyes, and he pressed his head between his wrists, as if to bring back the
blood that might propel his judgment. They heard him mutter,
"No business prudence—yet plausible, persuasive—might do it well."
The Judge spoke now, with some firmness:
"Milburn, there is no use of your rebelling. Here you are and here you will
lie till nature does her restoration, assisted by this medicine I have brought
you. You must undergo calomel, and this quinine must set on its work of
several weeks to break up the regularity of these chills. In the meantime, as
your interests are also Vesta's, and Vesta's are mine, let me serve her, if not
you."
The positive tone influenced the weakened system of the patient. He looked
at all three of the observers, and said to Tilghman, "William, I might send

you but for your calling; leave me with the Judge a little while, both you
and Rhoda."
Rhoda took the Conestoga bonnet from the top of the Entailed Hat box, and
arrayed herself in it, to the rector's exceeding wonder.
"Let's you and me go take a little walk," she said, putting her hand in his
arm with a quiet confidence in which was a spark of Meshach's will. "I ain't
afraid of Princess Anne people, if they are proud. Mise Somers says King
Solomons was no better than a lily outen the pond, and said so himself."
The young man, sincere as his humility was, blushed a little at the idea of
walking through his native town with that bonnet at his side, he being of
one of the self-conscious, high-viewing families of the old peninsula—his
grand-uncle the staff-officer of Washington, and messenger from Yorktown
to Congress with the news, "Cornwallis has fallen;" but it was his chivalric
sense, and not his piety, which immediately dispelled the last touch of
coxcombry, when he felt that a lady had requested him.
"With happiness, Miss Holland;" and he did not feel one shrinking thought
again as he ran the gantlet of the idle fellows of the town, many of them his
former vagrant playmates. Rhoda was perfectly happy. He would have
taken her to his grandmother's, with whom he kept house, but that
aristocratic old dowager might say something, he considered, to destroy
Rhoda's confidence in her elegant appearance and easy vocabulary; and
they walked past Teackle Hall, where Vesta saw them, and opened the door
and made them come in and eat a little. Rhoda at first showed some
uneasiness under this great pile of habitation, but Vesta was so natural and
gracious that the shyness wore off, and, at a fitting moment, the bride said:
"Rhoda, my dear, there is a bonnet up-stairs I expect to wear this winter,
and I want to try it on you, whom I think it will particularly become."
Rhoda's quiet eyes flashed as she saw the new article and heard Vesta praise
it, upon her head. The old bonnet had received a cruel blow, in spite of Mrs.
Somers.
Tilghman, too, accused himself that he felt a little relieved when he escorted
Rhoda back to Meshach's in another bonnet, and Vesta followed, with her
great shaggy dog, Turk; she not unconscious—though serene and

thoughtfully polite to all she knew—of people peering at her in wonder and
excitement from every door and window of the town. The news was
working in every household, from the servants in the kitchens to the aged
people helped to their food with bib and spoon, that the famed daughter of
Daniel Custis was the prize of the junk dealer and usurer in "old town" by
the bridge, who had enslaved a wife at last.

Chapter XIX.
THE DUSKY LEVELS.

The new son-in-law, left alone with Judge Custis, asked to be propped up in
bed, and nothing was visible that would support his pillow but the aged
leather hat-box that Custis, with a wry face, brought to do duty.
"My illness is unfortunate," he gasped; "not only to me, but to the new ties I
have formed; to the mutual interest my wife and I have in making up your
losses on Nassawongo furnace, which we are all the poorer by to that
amount; and to a suitor whose cause I have taken up. I have bought an
interest in a great lawsuit."
"Then the day of reckoning of your enemies has come, Milburn."
"Not yet," said the sick man, with a proud flash of his eyes, "unless I am no
merchant and you are no lawyer, and the first I will not concede."
"Nor I the second," exclaimed the Judge, with some pride and temper.
"You were once a good lawyer, if visionary," resumed the money-lender,
with scant ceremony. "Had we been able to respect each other we might
have been confederated in things valuable to ourselves and to our time and
place. But that is past, and you do not possess my confidence as my legal
agent, my attorney. I wish you to get another advocate for me."
"I am willing to be useful, even without your compliments," the Judge said,
remembering his Christian resolution. "We will not quarrel, if I can serve
you."
"I do not wish to hurt your feelings, but my strength is not great enough for
unmeaning flattery. This marriage was so dear to my heart that I have put it
before a very large interest about which I have no time to lose, and still am
helpless upon this bed. I will trust you to do my errand. Go to that chest,
Judge Custis, and you will find a package of papers in the cedar till at the
end. Bring them here."

As the Judge opened the old chest a musty smell, as of mummies wrapped
in herbs, ascended into his nose, and he saw some faded clothes, as those of
poor people deceased, male and female, lying within. The mocking-bird
piped a noisy warning as he raised the lid of the till and saw the desired
papers among a parcel of spotted and striped bird-eggs:
"Come see! come see! Meshach! he! he! sweet!"
"Now open the window yonder," said Meshach, taking the papers, "and let
Tom fly out. He starts my nerves. Wh-oo-t, whi-it, Tom!"
The mocking-bird, spreading its wings and tail, and striking obstinately
towards its master a minute, as he whistled, flew out of the window and
settled in the old willow below, and had a Sunday-afternoon concert, calling
the passing dogs by name, whistling to them, and deceiving cats and
chickens with invitations they familiarly heard, to eat, to shoo, to scat, and
to roost.
"If he regulates his wife like that bird," the Judge spoke to himself, "she
will fly to heaven soon."
Milburn opened the papers, counted them, and handed them to his father-in-
law.
"The papers will be plain to you, Judge Custis, after I have made a few
words of explanation. You well know that the canal between the Delaware
and Chesapeake is finished, and vessels are now passing through it from
bay to bay. It is taking one hundred dollars a day tolls, and twenty vessels
already go past between sun and sun, though the size of the shipping of the
cities it connects has not yet been adapted to its proportions. It has been a
cheap and quick work, costing something above two millions of dollars,
taking only five years of time; and yet it has begun its mercantile life by a
cheat upon a man to whom it is indebted as a promoter and contractor, and
to whom I have advanced the means to compel justice and damages."
"Well, well, Milburn; I must pay tribute to your enterprise. The era of these
great carrying corporations has barely begun, and you stake your little
fortune against one of them that is backed by the great city of
Philadelphia!"

"The canal passes through the state of Delaware, in which is three quarters
of its little length of only fourteen miles, and there a suit will be free, to
some extent, from the corruptions they might exercise in Pennsylvania; and,
if successful there, we can more easily attach the tolls of the canal. I have
no more faith in the Legislature of Delaware than of any other state;
kidnappers sit in its responsible seats, and it licenses lotteries to make prizes
of its own honor. But we shall try our case before a simple jury, which will
be flax in the hands of one lawyer in that state, if we can secure him; but
hitherto he has refused my contractor, and will not take the case."
"Why," said the Judge, "you must mean Clayton, the new senator."
"That is the man," Milburn continued, stopping for strength and breath. "He
is finely educated, I hear, at the colleges and law schools, and possesses a
remarkable power over the agricultural and mixed races of that small state,
whom he thoroughly understands by sympathy and acquaintance. I heard
him once in court, at Georgetown, wither and confound the confederated
kidnapping influences of the whole peninsula, and, against the will and
intention of the jury, prevail upon their fears and sensibilities to find a bold
rogue guilty of stealing free men; of color—a rogue who was in this room,
unless it is a delusion of my fever, this very day, and with whom I fancied I
had been in collision somewhere."
"You only knocked him down with a brick, after Samson had done it with
his fist, and then the fellow came to me for shelter, afraid you would pursue
him at law, and I suppose he did an errand for my servants to this abode."
The Judge looked around upon the abode as if he had used the most
respectable word he could possibly apply to it.
"I will compromise with such scoundrels as that one," Milburn spoke, "only
when I am afraid of them. But, to conclude my statement; for reasons of
timidity, or doubts of success, or political ambition—something I cannot
fathom—Mr. Clayton will not hearken to my debtor, and I have not
disclosed my own interest in the suit. He is at home from Washington, and
an appointment has been made with him at his office in Dover to-morrow.
You see I am unable to keep it, and I have no one else to send, and
information reaches me that the canal company, discovering my money in
the contractor's bank account, intends to retain Clayton forthwith. If you set

out this afternoon, you can reach Laureltown for bedtime. It is at least forty
miles thence to Dover, and you might ride it to-morrow by noon, with push,
and in that case you have a chance to beat the Philadelphia emissary several
hours. I have five thousand dollars at stake already; I believe I shall get
damages of forty times five if I can retain that man."
"I am ready to start at once," said the Judge, rising up; "I can read these
papers on the way. The saddle was my cradle, and I have a good horse. My
valise can follow me on the stage to-morrow."
"Unless you see the best reasons for it, my name is not to be mentioned to
any one as a party to this suit; I am not popular with juries."
"Then good-bye, Milburn," said the Judge, but did not extend his hand. "As
you treat my daughter, may God treat you!"
"Amen," exclaimed the money-lender, as the Judge's feet passed over the
door-sill below, and he sank back to the bed, exhausted again.

While the proceedings described occupied the white people, the servants,
Roxy and Virgie, in their clean Sunday suits, loitered around the bridge
behind the store, or strayed a little way up the Manokin brook, hearing the
mocking-bird rend his breast in all the ventriloquy of genius.
"Virgie," said Samson Hat, meeting them under the willow-tree, "when I
carries you off and marries you, I s'pect you'll be climbin' up in my loft, too,
makin' it comf'able fo' me."
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, you old, black, impertinent servant
of darkness!" Virgie said. "Indeed, when I look at a man, he must be almost
white—not all white, though, like Roxy's beau."
"Who's he, Roxy?" Samson asked.
Roxie blushed, and said she had no beau, and never wanted one.
"Roxy's beau," says Virgie, "is that poor, helpless Mr. Jack Wonnell. He
comes to see her every day. He's devotion itself. Indeed, Samson, if you are

going to marry me, and Roxy marry all those bell-crown hats, we shall cure
the town of its two greatest afflictions."
"Bad ole hats?" asks Samson.
"Roxy'll burn all the bell-crowns for her beau, and I'll bury the steeple-hat
and you that cleans it, and the people will be so glad they'll set me free and
I can go North."
"Look out, Virgie; I'll put dat high-crown hat on you like Marster Milburn
put de bell on de buzzard. He went up to dat buzzard one day wid a little
tea-bell in his hand an' says, 'Buzzard, how do ye like music?' Says de
buzzard, tickled wid de compliment, 'I'm so larnid in dat music, I disdains
to sing; I criticises de birds dat does.' 'Den,' says Mars Milburn, 'I needn't
say to ye, P'ofessor Buzzard, dat dis little bell will be very pleasin' to yo'
refine taste.' Wid dat he takes a little piece o' wire an' fastens de tea-bell to
de bird's foot an' says, 'Buzzard, let me hear ye play!' De buzzard flew and
de bell tinkled, an' all de other buzzards hear some'in' like de cowbell on de
dead cow dey picked yisterday, an' dey says, 'Who's dat a flyin' heah?
Maybe it's a cow's ghose!' So dey up, all scart, an' cross'd de bay; an' de
buzzard wid a bell haint had no company sence, becoz he stole a talent he
didn't have, and it made everybody oncomfitable."
"I've heard about Meshach belling a buzzard," said Roxy, "but they say he's
got something on his foot, too, like a hoof—a clove foot. Did you ever see
it, Samson?"
"He never tuk his foot off," said the negro, warily, "to let me see it. Dat bell
on de buzzard, gals, is like white beauty in a colored skin; it draws white
men and black men, like quare music in de air, but it makes de pale gal
lonesome. She can't marry ary white man; she despises black ones."
The shrewd lover had touched a chord of young pain in the hearts of both
those delicate quadroons. Both were so nearly white that the slight
corruption increased their beauty, rounded their graceful limbs, plumpened
their willowy figures, gave a softness like mild night to their expressive
eyes, and blackened the silken tassels of their elegant long hair. No tutor
had taught them how to walk,—they who moved on health like skylarks on
the air. Faithful, pure-minded, modest, natural, they were still slaves, and

their place in matrimony, which nature would have set among the worthiest
—superior in love, superior in maternity, superior in length of days and
enjoyment—was, by the freak of man's caste, as doubtful as the mermaid's.
Roxy was a little the shorter and fuller of shape, the milder and more
pathetic; in Virgie the white race had left its leaner lines and greater
unrelenting. She said to Samson, with the pique her reflections inspired,
"I never thought the first man to make love to me would be as black as
you."
"De white corn years," says Samson, "de rale sugar-corn, de blackbird gits.
None of dem white gulls and pigeons gits dat corn. A white feller wouldn't
suit you, Virgie."
"Why?" says Roxy, "Virgie was raised among white children; so was I. We
didn't know any difference till we grew up."
"Dat was what spiled ye," Samson said; "de colored man is de best husban'.
He ain't thinkin' 'bout business while he makin' love, like Marster Milburn.
The black man thinks his sweetheart is business enough, long as she likes
him. He works fur her, to love her, not to be makin' a fool of her, and put his
own head full of hambition, as dey calls it. You couldn't git along wid one o'
dem pale, mutterin' white men, Virgie. Now, Roxy's white man, he's most as
keerless as a nigger; he kin't do nothin' but make love, nohow. Dat's what
she likes him fur."
"He's as kind a hearted man as there is in Princess Anne," Roxy spoke up. "I
never thought about him except as a friend. I know I sha'n't look down on
him because he likes a yellow girl, for then I would be looking down on
myself."
"Virgie," said Samson, "I reckon I'm a little ole, but you kin't fine out whar
it is. Ye ought to seen me fetch dat white hickory of a feller in de eye
yisterday, and he jest outen his teens. I know it's a kine of impedent to be a
courtin' of you, Virgie, dat's purtier dan Miss Vesty herself—"
"Nobody can be as pretty as Miss Vesta," Virgie cried, delighted with the
compliment; "she's perfection."

"As I was gwyn to say," dryly added Samson, "I never just knowed what I
was a lettin' Marster Milburn keep my wages fur, till he married Miss Vesty,
and then I sot my eyes on Miss Vesty's friend an' maid, and I says, 'Gracious
goodness! dat's de loveliest gal in de world. I'll git my money and buy her
and set her free, and maybe she'll hab me, ole as I am.'"
"She will, too, Samson, if you do that, I believe," Roxy cried; "see how
she's a-smiling and coloring about it."
Virgie's throat was sending up its tremors to her long-lashed eyes, and a
wild, speculative something throbbed in her slender wrists and beat in the
little jacket that was moulded to her swelling form: the first sight of
freedom in the wild doe—freedom, and a mate.
"My soul!" Roxy added, "if poor Mr. Wonnell could set me free, I think I
might pity him enough to be his wife."
Samson used his opportunity to stretch out his hand and take Virgie's, while
she indulged the wild dream.
"Dis han' is too purty," he said, "to be worn by a slave. Let me make it
free."
She turned away, but the negro had been a wise lover, and his plea pierced
home, and it struck the Caucasian fatherhood of the bright quadroon.
"Freedom is mos' all I got," the negro continued; "it's wuth everything but
love, Virgie. Dat you got. Maybe we can swap' em and let me be yo' slave."
"Don't, don't!" pleaded Virgie, pulling her hand very gently. "I'm afeard of
you; you clean the Bad Man's hat."

Chapter XX.
CASTE WITHOUT TONE.

Judge Custis was well out of town, riding to the north, when the little
reading-circle assembled, without his patronage, over the old store, and the
young minister directed it. In the warm afternoon the windows were raised
till Milburn's chill began to set in again, and they could hear the mocking-
bird, in his tree, tantalizing the great shaggy dog Turk by whistling to him,
"Wsht! wsht! Come, sir! come, sir! Sic 'em! sic 'em! wh-i-it! sic 'em, Turk!
wsht! wh-i-i-t! Sirrah! Ha! ha!"
Turk would run a little way, run back, see nobody, watch all the windows of
the store, and finally he seemed to think the spot was haunted, or unreliable
in some way; for he would next run to the open store door, and bark, run
back, and, from a distance, watch the hollow dark within, as if a vague
enemy lived there, mocking his obedient nature and keeping his mistress
captive. Turk was a setter with mastiff mixing, worth a little for the hunt
and more for the watch, but as an ornament and friend worth more than all;
he was so impartial in his favors as to like Aunt Hominy and Vesta about
equally, and often slept in the kitchen before the great chimney fire.
"Do we worry you, Mr. Milburn, by reading here?" Vesta asked.
"No, my darling. It is so kind of you to bring music to my poor loft."
William Tilghman opened his Bible at a place marked by a little ribbon-
backed bristol card, inscribed in Vesta's childhood by her learning fingers,
"Watch with me." He thought of his cousin, now fluttering between her
betrayal to this Pilate and her crucifixion, and caught her eyes looking at the
Bible-marker, as if saying to him and to the forest maiden, "Watch with
me."
Tilghman started the reading, Vesta followed, and Rhoda had to do her part,
also; but she required to labor hard to keep up, as the chapter was in the

Acts, descriptive of Paul's voyage towards Rome, and had plenty of hard
words and geography in it. At one verse, Rhoda's reading was like this:
"And—when—we—had—sailed—slowl—li—many-days—and—scare—
scare—skar —skurse—I declar', Aunt Vesty, this print is blombinable!—
scace—Oh, yes, scacely—scarce—were—come—over—against—Ceni—
Snide—Snid—Mr. Tilghman, what is this crab-kine of word? Cnidus? Well,
I declar'! a dog couldn't spell that; it looks like Snyder spelled by his hired
man—against Cnidus—the—wind—not—snuffers—no, snuffering (here
Rhoda executed the double sniffle)—yes, didn't I say snuffering? I mean
suffering—suffering—us—we—sailed—under—I can't spell that nohow;
nobody kin!"
"'Sailed under Crete,' dear," assisted Vesta.
"Sailed under—Crety—over—against—Sal—Sal—Salm—oh, yes, psalms!
No: Sal Money."
"Salmone," explained the rector, not daring to look up; "we sailed under
Crete over against Salmone; and, hardly passing it, came unto a place which
is called the Fair Havens, nigh whereunto was the city of Lasea.'"
"Lord sakes!" exclaimed Rhoda, putting out her crescent foot, on which was
Vesta's worked stocking, "did they have Fair Havens in them days? Was it
this one over yer on the Wes'n Shu?"
"No," answered Tilghman; "Fair Havens was always a ready name for
sailors finding a good port in trouble."
"Thar ain't no good port out thar on the Oushin side now but Monroe's Inlet,
outen Jinkotig. The rest of 'em gits filled up, an' kadgin's the on'y way to
kadge through of 'em, Misc Somers says."
"She means warping, or pulling over a shoal inlet by a rope to an anchor, as
the water lifts the vessel."
"Yes, you know, Mr. Tilghman," Rhoda cried, delighted; "that's kadgin'—
pullin' over the bar by the anchor line. You're all agroun', can't git nowhar,
air a-bumpin' on the bar, an' the breakers is comin' dreadful in your side:
you'll break all up if you stay thar. So you git the little anchor—the little

one is better than ary too big a one—an' put it in the yawl an' paddle acrost
the bar an' sot her, an' them aboard pulls as the billers lifts ye, and so they
keep her headed in, and, kadging, kadging, bumpety-bump, at las' you go
clar of the bar an' come home to smooth haven in Sinepuxin."
"Yes, my sisters," appended the young minister, "we need often to kedge
home, to warp over the bars of life, and Hope, in ever so little an anchor,
helps a little, if we do not lose the line. Little hopes are often better than
great ones, for o'er-great hopes swamp little vessels. Even hope must be
artfully shaped and skilfully dropped to take hold of the unseen bottoms of
opportunity. All of us have entertained burdensome hopes, heavy anchors,
and they would not hold us against the breakers; but there may be little
hopes, carried in advance of us, that will draw us into pleasant sounds and
bays."
"We owe to you, Rhoda, this comforting hope," said Vesta, "and, while you
are with us, we shall teach you to read more confidently."
Vesta then sang Charles Wesley's hymn:
"'Jesus, in us thyself reveal!
The winds are hushed, the sea is still,
If in the ship Thou art.
Oh, manifest Thy power divine;
Enter this sinking church of Thine,
And dwell in every heart.'"
The sounds of her singing reached the people, rambling curiously around on
Sunday afternoon to see the principals in the surprising marriage they had
but lately heard of, and, as she ended, Mr. Milburn called her, saying,
"It is time for you to leave me till to-morrow."
"Is that your desire?"
"It is, kind lady. I have a servant-man, Samson, used to all my work, and
you can hear of my condition through your slave girls, going and coming. I
want you to feel free as ever, though my wife at last. I did not seek you to
cloud your morning, but to share your sunshine. Go to Teackle Hall, and

there I will come when I am stronger. At no time do I ever wish you to sleep
in this old stable."
"May I come and sit with you to-morrow, sir?"
"Oh, do so! I must see you a little day by day."
"May I take Rhoda with me?"
"Yes, if you will do it. She is a poor girl, but that is not her fault."
Vesta bent and touched his forehead with her lips, and, as she drew back, he
raised his cold hand and put a piece of paper in hers.
"Present my love to your mother," he said, in a chill; "and return her the
losses Judge Custis has named to me as her portion in Nassawongo furnace.
The amount is in this check, which I give you, although it is Sunday,
because it represents no business among any of us, but an act of peace."
"You are an honorable man," Vesta said; "I have cost you dearly."
"It is the bumping of a few years on the bar," Meshach answered, trying to
smile; "be you my anchor out in calm water, and I will try to draw to you
some day. It is not the price I pay that troubles me; it is the price you are
paying."
"I am deeply interested in you," Vesta said; "if I should say more than that,
it would not now be true."
"Thank you for that much," Milburn said; "even your pity is a treasure, and
I thank God that I have made so much progress. Before you go, let my bird
come in, and then shut the window, to keep the night-hawks and owls from
finding him."
He managed, between his rising paroxysms of the chill, to whistle a note or
two, and Tom flew in the window and fluttered viciously around his head,
as if to be revenged for exile, and then, leaping on the old hat-box, set up a
show performance, in which were all the menagerie of town and field, and,
stopping a little while to hear the bird sing her name again, Vesta and her
friends withdrew.

Mrs. Custis was found in her bedroom, much improved in spirits, but highly
nervous.
"Oh, my poor, martyred, murdered idol!" she screamed, as Vesta came in;
"are you alive? Is the beast dead? Don't tell me he dares to live."
"Yes, mamma, here are his teeth," Vesta said, when she had kissed her
mother warmly. "He has sent you a check for all your lost money, and his
love, and me to live here with you in Teackle Hall. Liberty, restitution, as
you name it, and his affection to both of us: is he not a gentleman now?"
Mrs. Custis eagerly took the check.
"Do you believe it is good, precious? Maybe he sent it to deceive me while
he could take advantage of your gratitude. Oh, these foresters are devils! I
wish I had the money for it."
"It is good for everything he has, mamma. Not to pay it would make him a
bankrupt. He gave it to me almost with gallantry. Indeed, he is the most
singular man I ever knew."
"That is the case with all pirates," said Mrs. Custis; "something in the
female nature attracts us to lawless men, who take what they want—
ourselves included. We were, I suppose, originally, just seized and
appropriated, and are looking out for the appropriator to this day. But you,
Vesta, with the Baltimore blood in you, do not expect to play the Sabine
bride tamely like that—to defend your spoiler and reconcile him to your
brethren?"
"I was thinking it was the Baltimore blood that made me appreciate Mr.
Milburn, mamma. The Custises were not traders."
"Pshaw! the Custises were libertines, unless history belies them; they had
else no popularity in the scamp court of Charley-over-the-water. He thought
the daughter of any gentleman in his following was made for his mistress,
and a large percentage of the said damsels thought he was right."
"Mr. Milburn is no Cavalier, I can see that," Vesta said; "I am attracted to
him by elements of such strength and simplicity that I fancy he is a
Puritan."

"Puritan fiddlestick!" Mrs. Custis said, putting Milburn's check in her
bosom and pinning it in there, and looking vigilantly at the pin afterwards.
"Now, my great comfort, my only McLane! do not idealize this forester as
of any beginning whatsoever. It is all wrong. Thousands of convicts were
exported to Chesapeake Bay from the slums of London, Bristol, Glasgow,
and other places, and propagated here like the pokeweed. With instincts of
larceny, and, possibly, a little rebellion in it, your man has robbed this house
of your person; if he should also take your heart, the shame would be upon
us."
"Oh, mother, you are unforgiving!"
"Of course I am; I am Scotch."
"You have not one son-in-law but this who would give you back the large
amount your husband has misspent—not one who could do it but at a
sacrifice you would not permit. For you and papa, to restore your faith in
each other, I married our stranger creditor, forcing him to the altar rather
than he me; and he has already proved himself of more delicacy than you, if
I am to believe you are in your right mind. No, I am no McLane."
"You are not, if you do not use their Scotch-Irish perseverance to get the
better of Meshach Milburn. You have obtained a marriage settlement with
him, now have it confirmed, and sue out your divorce before the
Legislature! Publicly as you have been profaned, ask the State of Maryland
for reparation. The McLanes, the Custises, and all their connections, from
the Christine River to the James, will storm Annapolis, make your cause, if
necessary, a political issue, and the courts of this county will give you
damages out of this beast's unpopular wealth."
Vesta looked at her mother with astonishment.
"What would become of my self-respect, my maiden name, if I made that
show of my private griefs, mother?"
"Why, you would be a heroine. Every old lover, of whom there are so many
eligible ones, would feel his zeal return. A romance would attend your name
wherever the Baltimore newspapers are taken, and you would be as great a
heroine as Betty Patterson."

"That disobedient girl?" Vesta, still in astonishment, exclaimed.
"I saw her when the bride of Jerome Bonaparte. She was not half as lovely
as you! If Jerome had seen you—you were not born, then, and I was in
society—he would never have looked at Betty. But, you see, she forced a
settlement out of the Emperor, husbanded the income of it, and she is rich,
and freer to-day than if she had become a French Bonaparte."
"Weak as they may be in many things, I am a Custis," Vesta spoke, with
pale scorn. "I would not drag my name through the tobacco-stained lobbies
of Annapolis to wear the crown of Josephine. The word I gave, in pity of
my parents, to the man who is now my husband, to become his wife, I
would not take back to my dying day, unless he first denied his word. I
believe there is such a thing as honor yet. Mother, you fret my father by
such principles."
"They are the principles of your uncle, Allan McLane."
"A man I shrink from," Vesta said, "although he is your brother. His
unfeeling respectability, his unchangeableness, his want of every impulse
but hate, his appropriation of our family honor, as if he was our lawgiver
and high-sheriff, his secretiveness, formal religion, and mysterious
prosperity, I do not appreciate, much as I have tried to be charitable to him.
I do not like Baltimore as I do the Eastern Shore; it is fierce, hard, and
suspicious."
"You shall not run down Baltimore before me," Mrs. Custis cried, hotly. "It
is a paradise to this region; and comparing Meshach Milburn to your uncle
is blasphemy."
"I have on my finger, mother, his mother's ring."
"A pretty object it is," said Mrs. Custis, taking a peep at it and another at her
check; "it requires a microscope to find it. The next thing you will be
walking through Baltimore on your bridal tour, followed by a mob of small
boys, to see Meshach's old steeple-top hat. Then I shall feel for you, Vesta."
The cruel blow struck home. Vesta's reception, so unexpected, so
acrimonious, affected her with a sense of gross ingratitude, and with a

greater disappointment—she had failed to restore joy to her parents by her
desperate sacrifice.
She began to feel that she might have done wrong. The broad sight of her
act, looking back upon it from this momentary revulsion, seemed a frightful
flood, like the mouth of one of the little Eastern Shore rivers that expands to
a gulf in the progress of a brook. Last night she saw in an instant the
misunderstandings and ruin she could prevent by her ready decision; now
she saw the misunderstandings she never could correct, the prejudices
stronger than parental sympathy, the wide separation her marriage had
effected between two classes of her duty—to think with her husband's
affection and her mother's interests at the same time.
It also occurred to her that her father, the darling of her thought, had seemed
slow to appreciate her marriage sacrifice, and was testy at her willingness to
loosen her heart with her vestal zone towards her husband.
The whole day had passed with such relief, such satisfaction, that she
expected to end it in the tranquillity of Teackle Hall, like some young eagle
returned to her nest with abundant prey for the old birds there, worn out
with storm and time. In place of love and healing nature, Vesta had found
worldliness, resentment, intrigue, and aspersion, concluding with a
reference to the one object she feared and shrank from—the hat of dark
entail, the shadow upon her future life. Her eyes filled up, she lisped aloud,
"I wish I had stayed with my husband!"
"Has he become so necessary to you already?" asked Mrs. Custis.
"He does appreciate my sacrifice," Vesta said, and her low sobs filled the
room. In a moment Virgie entered, alert to her playmate's pains, and threw
her arms around her mistress and kissed her like a child.
"Oh, missy," she spoke to Mrs. Custis, "to make her cry after what she has
done for all of us—to save your home, to save me from being sold!"
No scruples of race made Vesta reject this sympathy, precious to her
parched breast despite the quadroon taint as the golden sand in the brooks
of Africa, giving at once wealth and cooling. The slave girl's long white
arms, scarcely less pale than ivory—for she had slipped in at the sign of

sorrow, while making her simple toilet—drew Vesta into her lap and laid
her head upon the fair maiden shoulder, as if it was a babe's. On such a
shoulder, only a shadow darker, Vesta had often lain in infancy, and sucked
the milk that was sweet as Eve's—the common fount of white and black—
at the breast of Virgie's mother. That faithful nurse was gone; the wild
plum-tree grew upon her grave; but Virgie inherited the motherly instinct
and added the sisterly sympathy, and her rich hair, half unbound, streamed
down on Vesta's temples among the dark ringlets there, while she looked
into her own spirit for a word to check those tears, and found it:
"People will say you have been crying, dear missy. The Lord knows you did
right. Don't let anybody make you lose your faith till your master, your
husband, does wrong to you; he wouldn't like to have you cry."
There was a nervous chord somewhere in the slave's throat that trembled on
the key of the heroic, and her nostrils, slightly rounded, her head, free of
carriage as the wild colt's, and a light from her soft eyes that seemed to be
reflected on their long, silken lashes, bore out a spirit tamed by servitude,
which still could kindle to everything that concerned woman in her
birthright.
Vesta kissed Virgie, and ceased to sob; she rose and kissed her mother also.
"It was very wrong in me to say what I did not wish to say, about Uncle
Allan, mamma. I hope papa was kind to you to-day."
"Dear me!" Mrs. Custis cried; "everything is turned upside down by that
bog iron ore. A new element has come into the family to disturb it. Nobody
believes anything respectable any more. Your father is an infidel, or a
radical, or something perverse; you are defending those wild foresters!
What will become of the Christian religion and society and good
principles?"
"What did papa say before he left home?"
"He acted in the strangest manner, Vesta. He came right in and kissed me,
like a great booby, and sat down and wanted to talk about our courting days.
I thought at first he was drunk again, or that the Methodists had got hold of
him and fed him on camp-meeting straw. How do you account for it?"

Virgie had slipped out as soon as the talk became confidential.
"He wants to do better, dear mamma. Do respond to his contrition and
affection! If we could all humble our hearts, it would be so easy to start life
better, and turn this accident to joy and comfort. I have found new
engagements and reliefs already. There is a young girl, Mr. Milburn's niece,
whom I shall bring home this evening and occupy myself teaching her. She
is an orphan, without a mother's knowledge, barely able to read, but pretty
and quaint."
"Bring a forester in here?" Mrs. Custis exclaimed, fairly shivering. "What
will Allan McLane's daughters say? Your sister from Talbot has been here
all this day, and you have scarcely given her an hour. Between this fatal
marriage and your neglect, she left, with her husband, positively pale with
horror. I do not know what is to follow this marriage. I have posted a letter
already to my brother Allan, telling him of your betrayal by your father and
this bridegroom. All our connection will be up in arms."
Vesta's heart sank again, but she felt no fears of her husband's ability to
meet mere family opposition, secured by law and form in his rights. She
only feared hostility might rouse in him severity and defiance which would
neutralize her present influence upon him, and change his accommodating,
almost gentle, disposition as a husband.
For, blacker than any object in her future path, she saw a little, trivial thing,
like a wild boar closing her hitherto adventurous excursion into the forest
where her husband grew—the hat that had covered his head!
Her mother's thoughtless mention of that object made it formidable to her
fears as some iron mask locked round her husband's countenance, making
day hideous and the world a dungeon to all who must walk with him.
She discerned that his combative spirit would start to the defence of his hat
if it should become the subject of family rancor, because no man forgives
an insult to his personal appearance; and this article of wear had ringed his
brain with gangrene, and war made upon it would be met by war, while
Vesta had expected to induce forgetfulness of the rusty old tile, to charm
away the remembrance of it, and to have it laid forever aside.

"I am not the daughter of Uncle McLane," Vesta protested. "I am, besides, a
woman, free of my minority. Mr. Milburn is hardly the man to submit to
any trespass. I warn you, mamma, to put my uncle at no disadvantage; for
my husband has already beaten papa, and he will smile at your brother
when he knows that I do not support any of his pretensions."
"The first thing," answered Mrs. Custis, stubbornly, "is to see that he pays
this check. Oh, my dear money!"—she pressed it to her heart—"how
delightful it is to see you again. Science, love, glory, ideas: how vulgar they
are without money. With this check paid, I think I shall never read a book
again; and as for the bog ores, why, I shall scream if there is an iron article
in the house. Vesta, this house, I believe, is yours now? I had forgotten.
Well, no wonder you defend the man who took your father's roof from over
his head and gave it to you!"
"That is unkind, mamma. I value it only as a sure home for you and papa. If
I gave it to him it might be in risk again."
"But suppose you continue to defend this monster of a Milburn, he and you
may require the whole house. I am too well-bred to be converted to any of
his impious ideas. I am a Baltimorean, and stand by my colors."
"Let us speak of that no more," Vesta said, almost in despair, "but talk of
dear papa. I know he loves you."
"It is too late," Mrs. Custis remarked, solemnly, with another fondling of
her check; "he has neglected me too long. I expect his attention and respect,
and that he shall behave himself; but no lovey and no honey for me now.
Life has passed the noon and the early afternoon for him and me, and I live
to be respectable, to appreciate my security, to keep upstarts at arm's-length,
to enjoy my life in its appointed circle, taking care of my income, and never
—no, never!—giving any human being the opportunity to make me a
beggar again."
"Oh, mamma," Vesta said, "think of Judge Custis! Have you not made home
cold to him by this formalism? We must study men, and please them
according to their tastes, and therein lies our joy; else we are false to the
companionship God gave us to man for. Yield to your husband's boyish-
heartedness; fly with him, like the mate by the bird! He has repented;

welcome him to your love again, and stay his feet from truant going, or he
may dash down the precipice this sorrow has arrested him before, of
everlasting dissipation and the death of his noble soul!"
Vesta stood above her mother, deeply moved, deeply earnest. Her mother
stole another look at the bank check.
"Well, daughter, I will be humbugged by him if you desire it," she said, but
with slight answering emotion. "If I had my life to go over again I would
marry a business man, and let the aristocracy go. There is the second knock
at the front-door. I believe I will dress myself and go down-stairs too."
There were two ladies in the parlor when Vesta went there—Grandmother
Tilghman and the Widow Dennis.
"Good-evening, Vesta," said the old lady, who was stone-blind, but easily
knew Vesta's footstep. "William thought you would not go to evening
service on account of Mr. Milburn's illness, so I came around to sit till
church was over, when he will take me home. But what is that I hear in this
parlor, like somebody sniffling?"
"It's me, Aunt Vesty," said the voice of Rhoda Holland from the
background.
"This is Mr. Milburn's niece, who has come here to stay with me," Vesta
said.
"Ah! then it is no Custis. The last sniffle I heard was at the ball to Lafayette
in the spring of 1781. The marquis had marched from Head of Elk to the
Bald Friars' ferry up the Susquehanna and inland among the hills to
Baltimore, and we gave him a ball which, at his request, was turned into a
clothing-party. He snuffed so much that he kept up a sniffle all the evening,
like—"
Here Rhoda's sniffle was heard again.
"Yes, that's a good imitation," said Grandmother Tilghman, "but I don't like
it."
"Did the gineral dance at the ball?" asked Rhoda. "What did he do with his
swurd? Did he dance with it outen his scibburd?"

"He danced like a gentleman," Mrs. Tilghman replied, as if she would rather
not, "and led me out in the first set. You danced with him, Vesta, at the ball
in '24, forty-three years afterwards. Does he sniffle yet?"
"I don't recollect, grand-aunt. I was a little girl, and so much flattered that I
thought everything he did was perfect."
"Ah me!" exclaimed Mrs. Tilghman, pulling the feather of her turban up,
and looking as much like an old belle as possible at eighty years of age;
"you danced before Lafayette with my grandson Bill. Bill hardly
remembers Lafayette at all, thinking of you that night, so wonderful in your
girl's charms. I told him Vesta would never marry him, as he was too plain
and poor. But I never thought you would marry that—"
Here Rhoda sniffled warningly.
"Yes," exclaimed the old lady, catching the sniffle; "I never thought you
would marry that! But Bill is as dear a fool as ever. He says now that
Meshach Milburn is a good man, too. I never thought he was above a—"
Rhoda sniffled earnestly.
"Precisely that," exclaimed the old lady; "that was my estimate of the stock.
Bill says he is a financial genius. I don't see what is to become of girls in
this generation. Here is Ellenora, too good to marry Phœbus, the sailor man,
too poor to marry anybody else; now, if Milburn had married her and taken
her son Levin into his business, it would have been reasonable; but to take
you and pervert your happiness, almost makes me—"
Sniffle from Rhoda.
"Yes," said the old lady, snappishly; "almost! But I never did do it yet."
"Did you ever see Gineral Washin'ton, mem?" Rhoda asked. "I thought,
maybe, you was old enough. Misc Somers, she see him up yer to Kint River
a-crossin' to 'Napolis. He was a-swarin' at the cappen of the piriauger and a
dammin' of the Eas'n Shu, and he said they wan't no good rudes in Marylan'
nohow; that the Wes'n Shu was all red mud, an' the Eas'n Shu yaller mud,
an' the bay was jus' pizen. Misc Somers say she don't think it was Gineral

Washin'ton, caze he cuss so. She goin' to find out when she kin git a book
an' somebody to read outen it to her, caze she dreffle smart."
"Grand-aunt Tilghman," Vesta interposed to the blank silence of the room,
"knew General Washington intimately."
"Do tell us!" cried Rhoda. "You kin be a right interestin' ole woman, I
reckon, ef you air so quar."
In the midst of a smile, in which the blind old lady herself joined, and Mrs.
Custis at the same time entered the room, Mrs. Tilghman spoke as follows:
"I went to visit Cousin Martha Washington several years before the
Revolution, at Mount Vernon. I had seen her while she was the widow of
Cousin Custis, and we occasionally corresponded. In those days we visited
by vessel, so a schooner of Robert Morris's father set me ashore at Mount
Vernon. Colonel Washington was then having his first portrait painted by
Wilson Peale, and he was forty years old. Peale and Washington used to
pitch the bar, play quoits, and fox-hunt, while Cousin Martha, who was only
three months younger than the colonel, knitted and cut out sewing for her
colored girls, and heard her daughter, Martha Custis, play the harpsichord.
Poor Martha had the consumption; she was dark as an Indian; Washington
often carried her along the piazza and into the beautiful woodlands near the
house; but she died, leaving him all her money—nearly twenty thousand
dollars. We Custises rather looked down on Colonel Washington in those
days; he was not of the old gentry; his poor mother could barely read and
write, and once, when we went to Fredericksburg to see her, she was riding
out in the field among her few negroes as her own overseer, wearing an old
sun-bonnet, and sunburned like a forester."
"Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Custis. "I should think she was a great
impediment to Washington."
"I reckon that's the way her son got big," exclaimed Rhoda; "if his mar had
laid down in bed all day, he couldn't have killed King George so easy with
his swurd."
"I often said to Cousin Martha, 'What did you see in this big horse of a
man?' 'Oh,' she replied, 'he's the best overseer in Virginia. He looks after my
property as no other man could.'"

"Then," said Mrs. Custis, emphatically, "he was one man out of a
thousand."
"That's the kind of man you married, Vesta," spoke up Mrs. Dennis.
"Her husband," said Mrs. Custis, "looked after her father's property, I am
sure, for he got it all."
"And returned it all," exclaimed Vesta.
Mrs. Custis remarked that Washington certainly was a blue-blooded man.
"Is thar people with blue blood comin' outen of 'em?" asked Rhoda Holland.
"Lord sakes! I should think it would make 'em cold."
"I wonder if men are ever great?" asked Vesta; "or whether it is not great
occasion and trial that project them. A crisis comes in our lives, and, finding
what we can endure, we incur greater risks, and finally delight in such
adventure."
"That is the way with my poor boy, Levin," said Mrs. Dennis, quietly, to
Vesta. She was a pretty woman, somewhat past thirty, with rosy cheeks,
blue eyes, neat but rather poor attire, and a simple, artless manner, and
might have passed for the sister of her son.
"Is Levin coming for you to-night?" Vesta asked.
"No," blushed the widow; "James Phœbus will see me home. Levin has
gone off in his boat, and I have been worried about him all day. Some time,
I am afraid, he will go and never return. Oh, Cousin Vesta, this waiting for a
husband neither alive nor dead is very trying."
Overhearing the remark, Mrs. Custis remarked, "Norah, you ought to be
ashamed to keep that faithful fellow waiting on you, when you could give
yourself a good husband and reward him so easily."
"I think you had better look out for old age," Mrs. Tilghman also said,
"while you have youth and good looks to obtain the provision. Oden Dennis
is probably dead; if not dead, he does not mean to return, for I can think of
no circumstances in this age which would forcibly detain a man from his
wife fifteen years. Even if he was in a prison, he would be allowed to write

to you. He may not be dead, Norah, but he is not coming back. Get a father
for your son; you cannot manage Levin."
"Maybe he has been stoled by Injins," exclaimed Rhoda, with great fervor;
"thar was a Injin captive in a shew at Nu-ark, that had been kept nineteen
years. He forgot his language, and whooped dreffle. Misc Somers say he
was an imploster, an' worked on the Brekwater up to Lewistown. She's
always lookin' behind the shew to find out somethin'." (Slight sniffle.)
"Do get that girl a pocket-handkerchief, and show her how to use it,"
exclaimed Mrs. Tilghman, breaking out. "Ah! girls, I have been a widow
thirty years. I never gave up the expectation of marrying again till I lost my
eyesight; and even after that, at sixty-five, I had an offer of marriage; but I
said to my gallant old beau, 'I will not take a man I cannot compliment by
seeing him and admiring him every day. I love you, but my blindness would
give you too much pain.' In our quiet towns, all the life worth living is
domestic joy. Do not lose it, Ellenora; do not put it off too long!"
"I could love Mr. Phœbus, plain as he is," the widow spoke, "if I could
persuade myself that Oden is dead. But that I cannot do. A real person—
spirit or man—is watching over me closely. My very shoes I wear to-night
came from that mysterious agent. It is not my son; it is not James Phœbus.
No other stranger would so secretly assist me. I am bound up in the fear and
wonder that it is my husband."
"That does beat conjecture," said old Mrs. Tilghman. "Have you no friend
you might suspect?"
"None," the widow answered. "None who have not worn out their means of
giving long ago. Can I marry, with this ghostly visitation coming so
regularly? Should I not have faith in a husband's living if I receive a wife's
care from an unseen hand?"
"Oden Dennis," Mrs. Custis remarked, "was hardly a man to do charity and
not be seen. He was rather self-indulgent, demonstrative, and restless. I
cannot think of his nocturnal visits in the body. Besides, he would not
supply you in that way, Norah, if he meant to come back; and if he cannot
himself come to you, neither could he send."

Not altogether relishing Mrs. Tilghman's reproof, Rhoda was again heard
from, saying:
"Lord sakes! all the women has to talk about when they is gone is the men.
When the men comes, they talks as if they never missed of 'em. Misc
Somers, she never had no man, an' she talks mos' about the women that has
got one. I think Aunt Vesty has got the best man in Prencess Anne. He's the
richest. He's the freest. He never courted no other gal. He ain't got no quar
old women runnin' of him down—caze Misc Somers is dreffle afraid of
him!" This last remark seemed apologetic and an afterthought.
"I am beginning to think my fortune is better than I deserve," Vesta replied,
to soften the application, as wine, tea, and cake were brought in. "Now, dear
friends, as I am Mr. Milburn's wife, let us all be Christians this Sunday
night, and drink his health and happy recovery, and that he may never
repent his marriage."
They drank with some hesitation, except the bride, Rhoda, and Mrs. Dennis.
Mrs. Tilghman needed the wine too much to wait long, and Mrs. Custis,
finding she was observed, took a sip from her glass also, excusing herself
on the ground of a recent headache from drinking heartily.
As the conversation proceeded, now by general participation, again by
couples apart, and Vesta found herself more and more a subject of
sympathy, with no little curiosity interwoven in it, she also imagined that an
undertone of belief was abroad that she had made a mercenary marriage.
Old Mrs. Tilghman—in her prime a most caustic belle, and worldly as three
marriages, all shrewdly contracted, could make her—seemed determined to
hold that Vesta had rejected her grandson for the money-lender on the
consideration of wealth. Vesta's own mother, too, who should have known
her well, had twice hinted the same. Even the inoffensive Ellenora had
accepted that idea, or another kin to it, and Rhoda Holland had remembered
that her uncle was the richest of bridegrooms in Princess Anne. Vesta felt
the injustice, but said to herself:
"I must make the sacrifice complete, and incur any harsh judgment it may
bear. I see that I shall be driven for sympathy to the last place in the world I

anticipated: to my husband's heart. Yes, there is something besides love in
marriage: if I cannot love him, he can understand me."
Vesta had come to a place all come to who volunteer an act of great
sacrifice—to have it put upon a low motive from the lower plane of
sacrifice in many otherwise kind people. We give our money to an
institution of charity, and it is said that it was for notoriety, or self-seeking,
or at the expense of our kin. We lead a forlorn hope in politics, or some
other arena, to establish a cause or assist a principle, with the certain result
of defeat, and we are said to be jealous or malignant. Perhaps we make a
book to illustrate some old region off the highways of observation, drawn to
it by kindred strings or early patterings, and the politician there regards it as
an attack, the old family fossil as an intrusion, the very youth as if it were a
queer and gratuitous thing from such an outer source. So we wince a little,
but feel that it was necessary to be misunderstood to complete the sacrifice.
The feeling of despondency increased after the little company separated,
and Vesta went to her room and laid herself upon her still maiden bed. She
had said her prayer and asked the approval of God, but her nervous system,
under the tension of almost two days' excitement and events such as she had
never known, was alert and could not fall to slumber. Old passages of
Testament lore haunted her soul, such as: "Thy desire shall be to thy
husband, and he shall rule over thee;" "A man shall leave his father and his
mother, and shall cleave unto his wife." She began to see that marriage was
not merely the solution of a family trouble, and the giving of her body as a
hostage for a pecuniary debt, but that it was a rendition of all her liberty,
even the liberty of sympathy and of sorrow, to the man to whom she must
cleave.
In marrying him she had left friendship, father and mother, everything, at a
greater distance than she ever dreamed; and they resented the desertion to
the degree that they now confounded her with her new interest, let go their
claim upon her, and could scarce conceive of her except in the dual relation
of a woman subject to her husband, and selfish as himself.
"I wonder if he will grow weary of me, too," she thought, with anguish,
"after his possession is established and I shall have no other source of
confidence? What did I know of this world only yesterday? Then every way

seemed clear and open for me, my friends abundant, and love profuse; to-
day I am in awful doubts, and yet I must not lose my will and drift with
every passing fear and confusion into the fickleness which makes woman
contemptible after she has given her hand. I will never give up two persons
—my father, and my husband!"
As she turned down the lamp, it being nearly midnight, a short, fierce cry,
quickly stifled, as if some wild animal had howled once in nightmare and
fallen asleep in his kennel again, seized on her ears and chilled her blood.
Vesta started up in bed and listened. It seemed to her that there were
footsteps, but they passed away, and she listened in vain for any other
sounds, till sleep fell deep and dreamless upon her, like black Lethe
winding through a desert wedding-day.

Chapter XXI.
LONG SEPARATIONS.

Vesta was awakened by Roxy, Virgie, and her mother all standing around
her bed at once, exclaiming something unintelligible together. It was late
morning, the whole family having slept long, after the several experiences
of two such days, and the sun was shining through the great trees before
Teackle Hall and burnishing the windows, so that Vesta could hardly see.
"The kitchen servants have run away," Mrs. Custis shrieked, on Vesta's
request that her mother only should talk. "Old Hominy is gone, and has
taken all her herbs and witcheries with her; and all the young children bred
in the kitchen, Ned and Vince, the boys, and little Phillis, the baby, they,
too, are gone."
"I heard a strange cry or howl last night, as I dropped to sleep," Vesta
exclaimed, rubbing her eyes.
"Dear missy," cried Virgie, falling upon the pillow, "it was your poor dog
Turk; his throat has been cut upon the lawn."
"Yes, missy," Roxy blubbered, "poor Turk lies in his blood. There is nobody
to get breakfast but Virgie and me. Indeed, we did not know about it."
"That is not very likely," said the suspicious Mrs. Custis.
"I know you did not, girls," Vesta said, "you have too much intelligence and
principle, I am sure; nor could Hominy have been so inhuman to my poor
dog."
Vesta at once rose up and threw on her morning-gown.
"The first thing to be done is to have breakfast. Roxy, do you go at once to
Mr. Milburn's and bring his man Samson here, and awake Miss Holland to
take Samson's place by her uncle. Tell Samson to make the fire, and you

and he get the breakfast. No person is to speak of this incident of the
kitchen servants leaving us on any pretence."
"Won't you give the alarm the first thing?" cried Mrs. Custis, not very well
pleased to see Vesta keep her temper. "They may be overtaken before they
get far away, daughter. Those four negroes are worth twelve hundred
dollars!"
"They are not worth one dollar, mamma, if they have run away from us;
because I should never either sell them or keep them again if they had
behaved so treacherously."
"I say, sell them and get the money," Mrs. Custis cried; "are they not ours?"
"No, mamma, they are mine. Mr. Milburn and papa are to be consulted
before any steps are taken. Papa deeded them to me only last Saturday; why
should they have deserted at the moment I had redeemed them? Virgie, can
you guess?"
Virgie hesitated, only a moment.
"Miss Vesty, I think I can see what made Hominy go. She was afraid of
Meshach Milburn and his queer hat. She believed the devil give it to him.
She thought he had bought her by marrying you, and was going to christen
her to the Bad Man, or do something dreadful with her and the little
children."
"That's it, Miss Vessy," plump little Roxy added. "Hominy loved the little
children dearly; she thought they was to become Meshach's, and she must
save them."
"Poor, superstitious creature!" Vesta exclaimed.
"More misery brought about by that fool's hat!" cried Mrs. Custis. "If I ever
lay hands on it, it shall end in the fire."
"No wonder," Vesta said, "that this poor, ignorant woman should do herself
such an injury on account of an article of dress that disturbs liberal and
enlightened minds! Now I recollect that Hominy said something about
having 'got Quaker.' What did it mean?"

The two slave girls looked at each other significantly, and Virgie answered,
"Don't the Quakers help slaves to get off to a free state? Maybe she meant
that."
"Do you suppose the abolitionists would tamper with a poor old woman like
that, whose liberty would neither be a credit to them nor a comfort to her? I
cannot think so meanly of them," Vesta reflected. "Besides, could she have
killed my dog?"
"A gross, ignorant, fetich-worshipping negro would kill a dog, or a child, or
anything, when she is possessed with a devil," Mrs. Custis insisted.
"I don't believe she killed Turk," Roxy remarked, as she left the room.
"There was a white man in the kitchen last Saturday night: I think he slept
there; master gave him leave."
"Yes, missy," Virgie continued, after Roxy had gone to obey her orders; "he
was a dreadful man, and looked at me so coarse and familiar that I have
dreamed of him since. It was the man Mr. Milburn knocked down for
mashing his hat; he was afraid Mr. Milburn would throw him into jail, so he
asked master to hide in the kitchen. But Hominy was almost crazy with fear
of Mr. Milburn before that."
Vesta held up her beautiful arms with a look of despair.
"What has not that poor old hat brought upon every body?" she cried. "Oh,
who dares contest the sunshine with the tailor and hatter? They are the
despots that never will abdicate or die."
"The idea of your father letting a tramp like that sleep in the kitchen among
the slaves!" cried Mrs. Custis. "What obligation had he incurred there, too, I
should like to know? Teackle Hall is become a cave of owls and foxes; it is
time for me to leave it. Here is my husband gone, riding fifty miles for his
worst enemy, leaving us without a cook and without a man's assistance to
discover where ours is gone. I know what I shall do: I will start this day for
Cambridge, to meet my brother, and visit the Goldsboroughs there till some
order is brought out of this attempt to plant wheat and tares together."

Vesta stopped a moment and kissed her mother: "That is just the thing, dear
mother," she said. "Let me straighten out the difficulties here; go, and come
back when all is done, and you can be yourself again."
"I shall do it, Vesta. Brother Allan gets to Cambridge to-morrow afternoon;
I will go as far as Salisbury this day, and either meet him on the road to-
morrow or find him at Cambridge. Oh, what a house is Teackle Hall—full
of male and female foresters, abolitionists, runaways, and radicals! All
made crazy by the bog ores and the fool's hat!"
Descending to the yard, Vesta found Turk lying in his blood, his mastiff
jaws and shaggy sides clotted red, and, as it seemed, the howl in which he
died still lingering in the air. The Virginia spirit rose in Vesta's eyes:
"Whoever killed this dog only wanted the courage to kill men!" she
exclaimed. "James Phœbus, look here!"
The pungy captain had been abroad for hours, and the masts of his vessel
were just visible across the marshy neck in the rear of Teackle Hall. He
touched his hat and came in.
"Early mornin', Miss Vesty! Hallo! Turk dead? By smoke, yer's
pangymonum!"
"He's stabbed, Jimmy!" Samson Hat remarked, coming out of the kitchen;
"see whar de dagger struck him right over de heart! Dat made him howl and
fall dead. His froat was not cut dat sudden; it's gashed as if wid somethin'
blunt."
"Right you are, nigger! The throat-cuttin' was a make believe; the stab will
tell the tale. But who's this yer, lurkin' aroun' the kitchen do'; if it ain't Jack
Wonnell, I hope I may die! Sic!"
With this, active as the dog had been but yesterday, Jimmy rushed on Jack
Wonnell, chased him to the fence, and brought him back by the neck.
Wonnell wore a bell-crown, and his hand was full of fall blossoms. As
Wonnell observed the dead dog, pretty little Roxy came out of the kitchen,
and stood blushing, yet frightened, to see him.

"What yo' doin' with them rosy-posies?" Jimmy demanded. "Who're they
fur? What air you sneakin' aroun' Teackle Hall fur so bright of a mornin',
lazy as I know you is, Jack Wonnell?"
"They are flowers he brings every morning for me," Roxy spoke up, coming
forward with a pretty simper.
"For you?" exclaimed Vesta. "You are not receiving the attentions of white
men, Roxy?"
"He offered, himself, to get flowers for me, so I might give you as pretty
ones as Virgie, missy. I let him bring them. He's a poor, kind man."
"I jess got 'em, Jimmy," interjected Jack Wonnell, with his peculiar wink
and leer, "caze Roxy's the belle of Prencess Anne, and I'm the bell-crown.
She's my little queen, and I ain't ashamed of her."
"Courtin' niggers, air you!" Jimmy exclaimed, collaring Jack again. "Now
whar did you go all day Sunday with Levin Dennis and the nigger buyer?
What hokey-pokey wair you up to?"
"Mr. Wonnell," Roxy had the presence of mind to say, "take care you tell
the truth, for my sake! Aunt Hominy is gone, with all the kitchen children,
and Mr. Phœbus suspects you!"
"Great lightnin' bugs!" Jimmy Phœbus cried. "The niggers stole, an' the dog
dead, too?"
"I 'spect Jedge Custis sold 'em, Jimmy," Jack Wonnell pleaded, twisting out
of the bay captain's hands. "He's gwyn to be sold out by Meshach Milburn.
Maybe he jess sold 'em and skipped."
"Where is Judge Custis, Miss Vesty?" Phœbus asked.
"He has gone to Delaware, to be absent several days."
"Is what this bell-crowned fool says, true, Miss Vesty?"
"No. There was some fear among the kitchen servants of being sold; there
was no such necessity when they ran away, as it had been settled."

"It is unfortunate that your father is gone. He has been seen with a negro
trader. That trader and he disappear the same evening. The trader lives
about Delaware, too, Miss Vesty."
Vesta's countenance fell, as she thought of the suspicion that might attach to
her father. The great old trees around Teackle Hall seemed moaning
together in the air, as if to say, "Ancestors, this is strange to hear!"
"Who told you, Jack Wonnell," spoke the bay sailor, "that Judge Custis was
to be sold out?"
"I won't tell you, Jimmy."
"I told him," Roxy cried, after an instant's hesitation, while Jimmy Phœbus
was grinding the stiff bell-crown hat down on Wonnell's suffocating
muzzle. "I did think we was all going to be sold, and had nobody to pity me
but that poor white man, and I told him as a friend."
"And I never told anybody in the world but Levin Dennis yisterday," Jack
cried out, when he was able to get his breath.
"Whar did you go, Jack, wid the long man and Levin all day yisterday?"
Samson asked.
"Yes, whar was you?" Jimmy Phœbus shouted, with one of his Greek
paroxysms of temper on, as his dark skin and black-cherry eyes flamed
volcanic. "Whar did you leave Ellenora's boy and that infernal soul-buyer?
Speak, or I'll throttle you like this dog!"
"You let him alone, sir!" little Roxy cried, hotly, "he won't deceive
anybody; he's going to tell all he knows."
"Let go, Jimmy," Samson said; "don't you see Miss Vesty heah?"
"Don't scare the man, Mr. Phœbus," Vesta added; "but I command him to
tell all that he knows, or papa shall commit him to jail."
Jack Wonnell, taking his place some steps away from Phœbus, and wiping
his eyes on his sleeve, whimpering a few minutes, to Roxy's great agitation,
finally told his tale.

"I'm sorry, Jimmy, you accused me before this beautiful lady an' my purty
leetle Roxy—bless her soul!—of stealing Jedge Custis's niggers. Thair's
on'y one I ever looked sheep's eyes at, an' she's a-standin' here, listenin' to
every true word I says. I'm pore trash, an' I reckon the jail's as good as the
pore-house for me, ef they want to send me thair, fur it's in town, and Roxy
kin come an' look through the bars at me every day."
Roxy was so much affected that she threw her apron up to her face, and
Vesta and Phœbus had to smile, while Samson Hat, looking indulgently on,
exclaimed,
"Dar's love all froo de woods. Doves an' crows can't help it. It's deeper
down dan fedders an' claws."
"That nigger trader," continued Jack Wonnell, bell-crown in hand, "hired
me an' Levin to take him a tarrapinin'. He had a bag of gold that big"—
measuring with his hand in the crown of the hat—"an' he give Levin some
of it, an' I took it to Levin's mother las' night, an' told her Levin wouldn't be
back fur a week, maybe. I thought Mr. Johnson was gwyn to give me some
gold too, so I could buy Roxy, but yer's all he give me. Everybody
disappints me, Jimmy!"
Jack Wonnell showed an old silver fi'penny bit, and his countenance was so
lugubrious that the sailor exclaimed,
"Jack, he paid you too well for all the sense you got. Now, whar has Levin
gone with the Ellenora Dennis?"
"I don't know, Jimmy. He made Levin sail her up to the landin' down yer
below town, whair Levin's father, Cap'n Dennis, launched the Idy fifteen
year ago. I left Levin thar, and he said, 'Jack, I'm goin' off with the nigger
trader to git some of his money fur mother!'"
"Poor miserable boy!" Phœbus exclaimed; "he's led off easy as his pore
daddy. The man he's gone with, Miss Vesty, is black as hell. Joe Johnson is
known to every thief on the bay, every gypsy on the shore. He steals free
niggers when he can't buy slave ones, outen Delaware state. He sometimes
runs away Maryland slaves to oblige their hypocritical masters that can't
sell 'em publicly, an' Johnson and the bereaved owner divides the price. Go
in the house, yaller gal!" Jimmy Phœbus turned to Roxy, who obeyed

instantly. "Jack Wonnell, you go too; I'm done with you!" (Jack slipped
around the house and made his peace with Roxy before he started.) "You
needn't to go, Samson; I know you're true as steel!"
"I must go an' git de breakfast, Jimmy," the negro said, going in.
"Now, Miss Vesty"—Phœbus turned to the mistress of Teackle Hall—"Joe
Johnson has got old Hominy and the little niggers, by smoke! That part of
this hokey pokey is purty sure! Did he steal them an' decoy them, or wair
they sold to him by Judge Custis or by Meshach Milburn?"
"By neither, I will risk my life. Mr. Milburn was taken to his bed Saturday
evening, and on Sunday father went to Delaware on legal business for my
husband."
"That is Meshach Milburn, I hear," the bay sailor remarked, with a
penetrating look. "Shall I go and see him on this nigger business?"
"No," Vesta replied; "he is too sick, and it is a delicate subject to name to
him. My girls, Virgie and Roxy, think old Hominy ran away from a
superstitious fear she had of Mr. Milburn, who had become the master of
Teackle Hall by marriage."
"Yes, by smoke! every nigger in town, big and little, is afraid of Milburn's
hat."
"He has no ownership in those servants, nor has my father now. I will tell
you, James—relying on your prudence—that Hominy belonged to me, and
so did those three children, having passed from my father to my husband
and thence to me and back to my father, and from him to me again in the
very hour of my marriage. I fear they have been persuaded away, to be
abused and sold out of Maryland."
Jimmy Phœbus looked up at the sighing trees and over the wide façade of
Teackle Hall, and exclaimed "by smoke!" several times before he made his
conclusions.
"Miss Vesty," he said, finally, "send for your father to come home
immediately. People will not understand how Joe Johnson, outlaw as he is,
dared to rob a Maryland judge of his house servants, Johnson himself bein'

a Marylander, unless they had some understanding. Your sudden marriage,
an' your pappy's embarrassments, will be put together, by smoke! an' thar is
some blunt enough to say that when Jedge Custis is hard up, he'll git money
anyhow!"
The charge, made with an honest man's want of skill, battered down all
explanations.
"I confess it," said Vesta. "Papa's going away on a Sunday, and these people
disappearing on Sunday night, might excite idle comment. It might be said
that he endeavored to sell some of his property before his creditor could
seize it."
"I have seen you about yer since you was a baby, Vesty, an' Ellenora says
you're better game an' heart than these 'ristocrats, fur who I never keered!
That's why I take the liberty of calling you Vesty. Now, let me tell you about
your niggers. If they was a-gwyn to freedom in a white man's keer, I
wouldn't stop 'em to be cap'n of a man-of-war. But Joe Johnson, supposin'
that he's got of 'em, is a demon. Do you see the stab on that dog? well, it's
done with one of the bagnet pistols them kidnappers carries—hoss pistols,
with a spring dagger on the muzzle; and, when they come to close quarters,
they stab with 'em. Johnson killed your dog; I know his marks. He sails this
whole bay, and maybe he's run them niggers to Washin'ton, or to Norfolk,
an' sold 'em south. It ain' no use to foller him to either of them places, if he
has, with the wind an' start he's got, and your pappy's influence lost to us by
his absence. But thar is one chance to overhaul the thief."
"What is that, James?" said Vesta, earnestly. "I do want to save those poor
people from the abuse of a man who could kill my poor, fond dog."
"Joe Johnson keeps a hell-trap—a reg'lar Pangymonum, up near the head of
Nanticoke River. It's the headquarters of his band, and a black band they air.
He has had good wind"—the pungy captain looked up and noted the breeze
—"to get him out of Manokin last night, and into the Sound; but he must
beat up the Nanticoke all day, and we kin head him off by land, if that's his
destination, before he gits to Vienna, an' make him show his cargo. Then,
with a messenger to follow Jedge Custis an' turn him back, we can swear
these niggers on Johnson—and, you see, we can't make no such oath till we

git the evidence—an' then, by smoke! we'll bring ole Hominy an' the pore
chillen back to Teackle Hall."
"Here is one you love to serve, James," said Vesta, as the Widow Dennis
came in the gate.
"I came to meet you at the landing, James," said the blue-eyed, sweet-
voiced widow, with the timid step and ready blush. "Levin is gone for a
week with a negro trader; he sends me so much money, I fear he is under an
unusual temptation, and Wonnell says the trader is giving him liquor. What
shall I do?"
"Make me his father, Ellenory, and that'll give me an interest over him, and
you will command me. You want a first mate in your crew. Levin kin make
a fool of me if I go chase him now, and I can't measure money with a nigger
trader, by smoke!"
"Oh! James," the widow spoke, "you know my heart would be yours if I
could control it. When my way is clear you will have but to ask. Do go and
find Levin!"
"Norah, we suspect the same trader of having taken off Hominy, our cook,
and the kitchen children, in Levin's boat."
The widow listened to Vesta, and burst into tears. "He will be accessory to
the crime," she sobbed. "Oh, this is what I have ever feared. James Phœbus,
you have always had the best influence over Levin. If you love me, arrest
him before the law takes cognizance of this wild deed. Where has he gone?"
Virgie appeared upon the lawn to say that Mrs. Custis wanted to know who
should drive her as far as Salisbury, where she could get a slave of her son-
in-law to continue on with her to Cambridge.
"I have been thinking all the morning where I can find a reliable man to go
and bring back papa," Vesta answered; "there are a few slaves at the
Furnace, but time is precious."
"Here is Samson," Virgie said, "and he has got a mule he rides all over the
county. Let him go."
"Go whar, my love?" asked Samson.

"To Dover, in Delaware," Vesta answered. "You can ride to Laurel by dark,
Samson, and get to Dover to-morrow afternoon."
"And I can ride with him as far as Salisbury," Jimmy Phœbus said, "and get
out to the Nanticoke some way; fur I see Ellenora will cry till I go."
"You can do better than that, James," Vesta said, rapidly thinking. "Samson
can take you to Spring Hill Church or Barren Creek Springs, by a little
deviation, and at the Springs you will be only three miles from the
Nanticoke. Even mamma might go on with the carriage to-night as far as
the Springs, or to Vienna."
"If two of them are going," Virgie exclaimed, "one can drive Missy Custis
and the other ride the mule."
Samson shook his head.
"Dey say a free nigger man gits cotched up in dat ar Delawaw state.
Merrylin's good enough fur me. I likes de Merrylin light gals de best,"
looking at Virgie.
"Go now, Samson, to oblige Miss Vesty," Virgie said, "and I'll try to love
you a little, black and bad as you are."
"I'se afraid of Delawaw state," Samson repeated, laughing slowly. "Joe
Johnson, dat I put dat head on, will git me whar he lives if I go dar, mebbe."
"No," Phœbus put in, "I'll be a lookin' after him on the banks of the
Nanticoke, Samson, while you keep right in the high-road from Laurel to
Georgetown, and on to Dover. Joe Johnson's been whipped at the post, and
banished from Delaware for life, and dussn't go thar no more."
"If you go, Samson," little Roxy put in, having reappeared, "Virgie'll feel
complimented. Anything that obliges Miss Vesty counts with Virgie."
"If you are a free man," Virgie herself exclaimed, her slight, nervous,
willowy figure expanding, "are you afraid to go into a freer state than
Maryland? If I was free I would want to go to the freest state of all. Behave
like a free man, Samson Hat, or what is freedom worth to you?"

"It's wuth so much, pretty gal, dat I don't want to be a-losin' of it, mind, I
tell you, 'sept to my wife when she'll hab me."
Samson watched the quadroon's delicate, high-bred features, her skin
almost paler than her young mistress's, her figure like the clove's after a
hard winter—the more active that a little meagre—her head small, and its
tresses soft as the crow blackbird's plumage, and the loyalty that lay in her
large eyes, like strong passion, for her mistress, was turned to pride, and
nearly scorn, when they listened to him.
"A slave, Miss Vesty says"—Virgie spoke with almost fierceness—"is not
one that's owned, half as much as one that sells himself—to hard drink, or
to selfishness, or to fear. You're not a free man, Samson, if you're afraid, and
are like these low slave negroes who dare nothing if they can only get a
little low pleasure. All that can make a black man white, in my eyes, is a
white man's enterprise."
Vesta felt, as she often had done, the capable soul of her servant, and did
not resent her spirit as unbecoming a slave, but rather felt responsive chords
in her own nature, as if, indeed, Virgie was the more imperious of the two.
Coming now into full womanhood, her race elements finding their
composition, her character unrestrained by any one in Teackle Hall, Virgie
was her young mistress's shield-bearer, like David to the princely Jonathan.
"Why, Virgie," Samson answered, with humility, "I never meant not to go,
lady gal, after marster's wife asked me, I only wanted you to beg me hard,
an' mebbe I'd git a kiss befo' I started."
"Wait till you come back, and see if you do your errand well," Virgie spoke
again. "I shall not kiss you now."
"I will," cried little Roxy, to the amusement of them all, giving Samson a
hearty smack from her little pouting mouth; "and now you've got it, think
it's Virgie's kiss, and get your breakfast and start!"
As they went to their abodes to make ready, Jimmy Phœbus found Jack
Wonnell playing marbles with the boys at the court-house corner.
"Jack," he said, "I'm a-going to find Levin an' that nigger trader. I may git in
a peck of trouble up yonder on the Nanticoke. Tell all the pungy men whair

I'm a-goin', an' what fur."
"Can't I do somethin' fur you, Jimmy? Can't I give you one o' my bell-
crowns; thair's a-plenty of 'em left."
"Take my advice, Jack, an' tie a stone to all them hats and sink' em in the
Manokin. Ole Meshach's hat has made more hokey-pokey than the Bank of
Somerset. Pore an' foolish as you air, maybe your ole bell-crowns will ruin
you."
The road to Salisbury—laid out in 1667, when "Cecil, Lord of Maryland
and Avalon," erected a county "in honor of our dear sister, the Lady Mary
Somerset"—followed the beaver-dams across the little river-heads, and
pierced the flat pine-woods and open farms, and passed through two little
hamlets, before our travellers saw the broad mill-ponds and poplar and
mulberry lined streets of the most active town—albeit without a court-
house—in the lower peninsula. Jimmy Phœbus, driving the two horses and
the family carriage, and Samson, following on his mule, descended into the
hollow of Salisbury at the dinner-hour, and stopped at the hotel. The snore
of grist-mills, the rasp of mill-saws, the flow of pine-colored breast-water
into the gorge of the village, the forest cypress-trees impudently intruding
into the obliquely-radiating streets, and humidity of ivy and creeper over
many of the old, gable-chimneyed houses, the long lumber-yards reflected
in the swampy harbor among the canoes, pungies, and sharpies moored
there, the small houses sidewise to the sandy streets, the larger ones rising
up the sandy hills, the old box-bush in the silvery gardens, the bridges close
together, and the smell of tar and sawdust pleasantly inhaled upon the lungs,
made a combination like a caravan around some pool in the Desert of the
Nile.
"If there is any chance to catch my negroes," Mrs. Custis said, "I will go
right on after dinner. Samson, send Dave, my daughter's boy, to me
immediately; he is working in this hotel."
Samson found Dave to be none other than the black class-leader he had
failed to overcome at the beginning of our narrative, but changes were
visible in that individual Samson had not expected. From having a clean,
godly, modest countenance, becoming his professions, Dave now wore a
sour, evil look; his eyes were blood-shotten, and his straight, manly

shoulders and chest, which had once exacted Samson's admiration and
envy, were stooped to conform with a cough he ever and anon made from
deep in his frame.
"Dave," said Samson, "your missis's modder wants you, boy, to drive her to
Vienny. What ails you, Dave, sence I larned you to box?"
"Is you de man?" Dave exclaimed, hoarsely; "den may de Lord forgive you,
fur I never kin. Dat lickin' I mos' give you, made me a po', wicked,
backslidin' fool."
"Why, Dave, I jess saw you was a good man; I didn't mean you no harm,
boy."
"You ruined me, free nigger," repeated the huge slave, with a scowl, partly
of revenge and partly remorse. "You set up my conceit dat I could box. I
had never struck a chile till dat day; after dat I went aroun' pickin' quarrels
wid bigger niggers, an' low white men backed me to fight. I was turned out
o' my church; I turned my back on de Lord; whiskey tuk hold o' me,
Samson. De debbil has entered into Class-leader Dave."
"Oh, brudder, wake up an' do better. Yer, I give you a dollar, an' want to be
your friend, Davy, boy."
"I'll git drink wid it," Dave muttered, going; and, as he passed out of the
stable-door he looked back at Samson fiercely, and exclaimed, "May Satan
burn your body as he will burn my soul. I hate you, man, long as you live!"
Jimmy Phœbus remarked, a few moments afterwards, that Dave, dividing a
pint of spirits with a lean little mulatto boy, put a piece of money in the
boy's hands, who then rode rapidly out of the tavern-yard upon a fleet
Chincoteague pony.
At two o'clock they again set forward, the man Dave driving the carriage
and Jimmy Phœbus sitting beside him, while Samson easily kept alongside
upon his old roan mule, the road becoming more sandy as they ascended the
plateau between the Wicomico and Nanticoke, and the carriage drawing
hard.

"If it is too late to keep on beyond Vienna to-night," said Mrs. Custis, "I will
stop there with my friends, the Turpins, and start again, after coffee, in the
morning, and reach Cambridge for breakfast."
"I will turn off at Spring Hill," Samson spoke, "and I kin feed my mule at
sundown in Laurel an' go to sleep."
In an hour they came in sight of old Spring Hill church, a venerable relic of
the colonial Established Church, at the sources of a creek called Rewastico;
and before they crossed the creek the driver, Dave, called "Ho, ho!" in such
an unnecessarily loud voice that Mrs. Custis reproved him sharply. Dave
jumped down from the seat and appeared to be examining some part of the
breeching, though Samson assured him that it was all right. As Dave
finished his examination, he raised both hands above his head twice, and
stretched to the height of his figure as he stood on the brow of a little hill.
"Missy Custis," he apologized, as he turned back, "I is tired mighty bad dis
a'ternoon. Dat stable keeps me up half de night."
"Liquor tires you more, David," Mrs. Custis spoke, sharply; "and that tavern
is no place to hire you to with your appetite for drink, as I shall tell your
master."
At this moment Jimmy Phœbus observed the lean little mulatto boy who
had left the hotel come up out of the swampy place in the road and
exchange a look of intelligence with Dave as he rode past on the pony.
"Boy," cried Samson, "is dat de road to Laurel?"
The boy made no answer, but, looking back once, timidly, ground his heels
into the pony's flank and darted into the brush towards Salisbury.
"Samson," spoke Dave, "you see dat ole woman in de cart yonder?"—he
pointed to a figure ascending the rise in the ground beyond the brook—"I
know her, an' she's gwyn right to Laurel. She lives dar. It's ten miles from
dis yer turn-off, an' she knows all dese yer woods-roads."
"Good-bye, den, an' may you find Aunt Hominy an' de little chillen, Jimmy,
an' bring dem all home to Prencess Anne from dat ar Joe Johnson!" cried
Samson, and trotted his mule through the swamp and away. Jimmy Phœbus

saw him overtake the old woman in the cart and begin to speak with her as
the scrubby woods swallowed them in.
"What's dat he said about Joe Johnson?" observed Dave, after a bad spell of
coughing, as they cleared the old church and entered the sandy pine-woods.
Mrs. Custis spoke up more promptly than Jimmy Phœbus desired, and told
the negro about the escape of Hominy and the children, and the hope of Mr.
Phœbus to head the party off as they ascended the Nanticoke towards the
Delaware state-line.
"You don't want to git among Joe Johnson's men, boss?" said the red-eyed
negro; "dey bosses all dis country heah, on boff sides o' de state-line. All dat
ain't in wid dem is afraid o' dem."
"How fur is it from this road to Delaware, Dave?" asked Phœbus.
"We're right off de corner-stone o' Delawaw state dis very minute. It's
hardly a mile from whar we air. De corner's squar as de stone dat sots on it,
an' is cut wid a pictur o' de king's crown."
"Mason and Dixon's line they call it," interpreted Mrs. Custis.
"Do you know Joe Johnson, Dave?"
"Yes, Marster Phœbus, you bet I does. He's at Salisbury, he's at Vienna, he's
up yer to Crotcher's Ferry, he's all ober de country, but he don't go to
Delawaw any more in de daylight. He was whipped dar, an' banished from
de state on pain o' de gallows. But he lives jess on dis side o' de Delawaw
line, so dey can't git him in Delawaw. He calls his place Johnson's Cross-
roads: ole Patty Cannon lives dar, too. She's afraid to stay in Delawaw
now."
"Why, what is the occupation of those terrible people at present?" asked
Mrs. Custis.
No answer was made for a minute, and then Dave said, in a low, frightened
voice, as he stole a glance at both of his companions out of his fiery, scarred
eyes:
"Kidnappin', I 'spect."

"It's everything that makes Pangymonum," Jimmy Phœbus explained; "that
old woman, Patty Cannon, has spent the whole of a wicked life, by smoke!
—or ever sence she came to Delaware from Cannady, as the bride of pore
Alonzo Cannon—a-makin' robbers an' bloodhounds out of the young men
she could git hold of. Some of' em she sets to robbin' the mails, some to
makin' an' passin' of counterfeit money, but most of 'em she sets at stealin'
free niggers outen the State of Delaware; and, when it's safe, they steal
slaves too. She fust made a tool of Ebenezer Johnson, the pirate of Broad
Creek, an' he died in his tracks a-fightin fur her. Then she took hold of his
sons, Joe Johnson an' young Ebenezer, an' made 'em both outlaws an'
kidnappers, an' Joe she married to her daughter, when Bruington, her first
son-in-law, had been hanged. When Samson Hat, who is the whitest nigger
I ever found, knocked Joe Johnson down in Princess Anne, the night before
last, he struck the worst man in our peninsula."
Dave listened to this recital with such a deep interest that his breath, strong
with apple whiskey, came short and hot, and his hands trembled as he
guided the horses. At the last words, he exclaimed:
"Samson knocked Joe Johnson down? Den de debbil has got him, and
means to pay him back!"
"What's that?" cried Jimmy Phœbus.
The sweat stood on the big slave's forehead, as if his imagination was
terribly possessed, but before he could explain Mrs. Custis interrupted:
"I think it was said that old Patty Cannon corrupted Jake Purnell, who cut
his throat at Snow Hill five years ago. He was a free negro who engaged
slaves to steal other slaves and bring them to him, and he delivered them up
to the white kidnappers for money; and nobody could account for his
prosperity till a negro who had been beaten to death was found in the
Pocomoke River, and three slaves who had been seen in his company were
arrested for the murder. They confessed that they had stolen the dead negro
and he had escaped from them, and was so beaten with clubs, to make him
tractable, that when they gave him to Purnell his life was all gone. Then he
was thrown in the river, but his body came up after sinking, and the
confession of the wretched tools explained to the slave-owners where all
their missing negroes had gone. They marched and surrounded Purnell's

hut, and he was discovered burrowed beneath it. They brought the dogs, and
fire to drive him out, and as he came out he cut his throat with desperate
slashes from ear to ear."
During this narrative the man Dave had listened with rising nervous
excitement, rolling his eyes as if in strong inward torment, till the
concluding words inspired such terror in him that he dropped the reins,
threw back his head, and shouted, with large beads of sweat all round his
brow:
"Mercy! mercy! Have mercy! Save me, oh, my Lord!"
"He's got a fit, I reckon," cried Jimmy Phœbus, promptly grasping the reins
as the horses started at the cry, and with his leg pinning Dave to the
carriage-seat. At that moment the road descended into the hollow of Barren
Creek, and, leaping down at the old Mineral Springs Hotel, a health resort
of those days, Phœbus humanely procured water and freshened up the
gasping negro's face.
"I declare, I am almost afraid to trust myself to this man," Mrs. Custis
observed, with more distaste than trepidation.
"Every nigger in this region," exclaimed Jimmy Phœbus, "thinks
Pangymonum's comin' down at the dreaded name of Patty Cannon; an' this
nigger's gone most to ruin, any way."
"Oh, marster," exclaimed the slave, recovering his speech and glaring
wildly around, "I hain't been always the pore sinner rum an' fightin' has
made of me. I served the Lord all my youth; I praised his name an' kept the
road to heaven; an' thinkin' of the shipwreck I'se made of a good
conscience, an' hearin' missis tell of the end of Jake Purnell, it made me yell
to de good Lord for mercy, mercy, oh, my soul!"
His frightful agitation increased, and Jimmy Phœbus soothed him, good-
naturedly saying:
"Mrs. Custis, I reckon you'd better let him come in the tavern and take a
little sperits; it'll strengthen his nerves an' make him drive better."

As they drank at the old summer-resort bar, at that time in the height of its
celebrity, and the only spa on the peninsula, south of the Brandywine
Springs, Phœbus spoke low to the negro:
"Dave, somethin' not squar and fair is a-workin' yer, by smoke! I've got my
eye on you, nigger, an' sure as hokey-pokey thair it'll stay. You know my
arrand yer, Dave: to save a pore, ignorant, deluded black woman from Joe
Johnson's band. Now, you've been a-cryin 'Mercy!' I want you to show
mercy by a-tellin' of me whar I'm to overtake an' sarch Levin Dennis's cat-
boat if it comes up the Nanticoke to-night with them people and Joe
Johnson aboard!"
Having swallowed his liquor greedily, the colored man replied, with his
former lowering countenance and evasive eyes:
"You can't do nothin' as low down de river as Vienny, 'case de Nanticoke is
too wide dar, and if you cross it at Vienny ferry, den you got de Norfwest
Fork between you and Johnson's Cross-roads, wid one ferry over dat, at
Crotcher's, an' Joe Johnson owns all dat place. But you kin keep up dis side
o' de Nanticoke, Marster Phœbus, de same distance as from yer to Vienny,
to de pint whar de Norfwest Fork come in. Sometimes Joe Johnson sails up
dat big fork to get to his cross-roads. In gineral he keeps straight up de oder
fork to Betty Twiford's wharf, right on de boundary line."
"How far is that?"
"It's five miles from yer to Vienny, and five miles from yer to a landin'
opposite de Norfwest Fork. Four miles furder on you're at Sharptown, an'
dar you can see Betty Twiford's house on de bank two miles acrost de
Nanticoke."
"Nine miles, then, to Sharptown! He's had the tide agin him since he
entered the Nanticoke, and it's not turned yit. By smoke! I'll look for a
conveyance!"
"You can ride with me to the first landing," spoke up a noble-looking man,
whip in hand; "and after delaying a little there, I shall go on the Sharptown
ferry and cross the river."

Phœbus accepted the invitation immediately, and cautioning Mrs. Custis to
speak with less freedom in that part of the country, he bade her adieu, and
took the vacant seat in the stranger's buggy.
When Mrs. Custis came to Vienna ferry, and the horses and carriage went
on board the scow to be rowed to the little, old, shipping settlement of that
name, the negro Dave, standing at the horses' heads, exchanged a few
sentences with the ferry-keeper.
"Dave," called Mrs. Custis, a little later on, "you have no love, I see, for old
Samson."
"He made a boxer outen me an' a bad man, missis."
"Do you know the man he works for—Meshach Milburn?"
"No, missis. I never see him."
"He wears a peculiar hat—nothing like gentlemen's hats nowadays: it is a
hat out of a thousand."
"I never did see it, missis."
"You cannot mistake it for any other hat in the world. Now, Samson is the
only servant and watchman at Mr. Milburn's store, and he attends to that
disgraceful hat. If you can ever get it from him, Dave, and destroy it, you
will be doing a useful act, and I will reward you well."
The moody negro looked up from his remorseful, brutalized orbs, and said:
"Steal it?"
"Oh, no, I do not advise a theft, David—though such a wretched hat can
have no legal value. It is an affliction to my daughter and Judge Custis and
all of us, and you might find some way to destroy it—that is all."
"I'll git it some day," the negro muttered; and drove into the old tobacco-
port of Vienna.

Chapter XXII.
NANTICOKE PEOPLE.

A map would be out of place in a story, yet there are probably some who
perceive that this is a story with a reality; and if such will take any atlas and
open it at the "Middle States" of the American republic, they will see that
the little State of Delaware is fitted as nicely into a square niche of
Maryland as if it were a lamp, or piece of statuary, standing on a
mantelpiece. It stands there on a mantelshelf about forty miles wide, and
rises to more than three times that height, making a perfectly straight north
and south line at right angles with its base. Thus mortised into Maryland, its
ragged eastern line is formed of the Atlantic Ocean and the broad Delaware
Bay.
The only considerable river within this narrow strip or Hermes of a state is
the Nanticoke, which, like a crack in the wall,—and the same blow
fractured the image on the mantel,—flows with breadth and tidal ebb and
flow from the Chesapeake Bay through the Eastern Shore of Maryland into
Delaware, and is there formed of two tidal sources, the one to the north
continuing to be called the Nanticoke, and that to the south—nearly as
imposing a stream—named Broad Creek.
Nature, therefore, as if anticipating some foolish political boundaries on the
part of man, prepared one drain and channel of ingress at the southwestern
corner of Delaware to the splendid bay of Virginia.
Around that corner of the little Delaware commonwealth, in a flat, poor,
sandy, pine-grown soil, Jimmy Phœbus rode by the stranger in the afternoon
of October, with the sun, an hour high in the west, shining upon his dark,
Greekish cheeks and neck, and he hearing the fall birds whistle and cackle
in the mellowing stubble and golden thickets.
The meadow-lark, the boy's delight, was picking seed, gravel, and insects'
eggs in the fields—large and partridge-like, with breast washed yellow from
the bill to the very knees, except at the throat, where hangs a brilliant

reticule of blackish brown; his head and back are of hawkish colors—
umber, brown, and gray—and in his carriage is something of the gamecock.
He flies high, sometimes alone, sometimes in the flock, and is our winter
visitor, loving the old fields improvidence has abandoned, and uttering, as
he feeds, the loud sounds of challenge, as if to cry, "Abandoned by man;
pre-empted by me!"
Jimmy Phœbus also heard the bold, bantering woodpecker, with his red
head, whose schoolmaster is the squirrel, and whose tactics of keeping a
tree between him and his enemy the Indian fighters adopted. He mimics the
tree-frog's cry, and migrates after October, like other voluptuaries, who
must have the round year warm, and fruit and eggs always in market.
Dressed in his speckled black swallow-tail coat, with his long pen in his
mouth and his shirt-bosom faultlessly white, the woodpecker works like
some Balzac in his garret, making the tree-top lively as he spars with his
fellow-Bohemians; and being sure himself of a tree, and clinging to it with
both tail and talons, he esteems everything else that lives upon it to be an
insect at which he may run his bill or spit his tongue—that tongue which is
rooted in the brain itself.
In the hollow golden bowl of echoing evening the sailor noted, too, the
flicker, in golden pencilled wings and back of speckled umber and mottled
white breast, with coal-black collar and neck and head of cinnamon. His
golden tail droops far below his perch, and, running downward along the
tree-trunk, it flashes in the air like a sceptre over the wood-lice he devours
with his pickaxe bill. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard!" was an instigation to
murder in the flicker, who loves young ants as much as wild-cherries or
Indian corn, and is capable of taking any such satire seriously upon things
to eat. Not so elfin and devilish as the small black woodpecker, he is full of
bolder play.
The redbird, like the unclaimed blood of Abel, flew to the little trees that
grew low, as if to cover Abel's altar; the jack-snipe chirped in the swampy
spots, like a divinity student, on his clean, long legs, probing with his bill
and critical eye the Scriptures of the fields; the quail piped like an old
bachelor with family cares at last, as he led his mate where the wild seeds
were best; and through the air darted voices of birds forsaken or on doctor's
errands, crying "Phœbe? Phœbe?" or "Killed he! killed he!"

"Are you a dealer?" asked the gentleman of Jimmy Phœbus.
"Just a little that way," said Jimmy, warily, "when I kin git somethin'
cheap."
The stranger had a pair of keen, dancing eyes, and a long, eloquent, silver-
gray face that might have suited a great general, so fine was its command,
and yet too narrowly dancing in the eyes, like spiders in a well, disturbing
the mirror there.
"Ha!" chuckled the man, as if his eyes had chuckled, so poorly did that
sound represent his lordly stature and look of high spirit—"ha! that's what
brings them all to my neighbor Johnson: a fair quotient!"
"Quotient?" repeated Jimmy.
"Johnson's a great factor hereabout," continued the military-looking man,
bending his handsome eyes on the bay captain, as if there was a business
secret between them, and peering at once mischievously and nobly; "he
makes the quotient to suit. He leaves the suttle large and never stints the
cloff."
"He don't narry a feller down to the cloth he's got, sir?" assented Jimmy,
dubiously.
"Why should he? His equation is simple: I suppose you know what it is."
"Not ezackly," answered Phœbus, pricking up his ears to learn.
"Well, it is force and class sympathy against a dead quantity: laws which
have no consignees, cattle which have no lawyer and no tongue, rights
which have lapsed by their assertion being suspended, till demand and
supply, like a pair of bulldogs, tear what is left to pieces. Armed with his ca.
sa., my neighbor Johnson offsets everybody's fi. fa., serves his writ the first,
and makes to gentlemen like you a satisfactory quotient. But he cuts no
capers with Isaac and Jacob Cannon!"
"I expect now that you are Jacob Cannon?" remarked the tawny sailor, not
having understood a word of what preceded. "If that's the case, I'm glad to
know your name, and thank you for givin' me this lift."

By a bare nod, just intelligible, Mr. Cannon signified that the guess would
do; and still meditating aloud in his small, grand way, continued:
"We let neighbor Johnson and his somewhat peculiar mother-in-law make
such commerce as suits him, provided he studies to give us no
inconvenience. That is his equation; with his quotient we have no concern
other than our slight interest in his wastage, as when Madame Cannon rides
down to change a bill and leaves an order for supplies—rum, chiefly, I
believe. Gentlemen like you come into this country to deal, replevin, or
what not, and we say to you all, 'Don't tread on us—that is all.' We shall not
look into your parcels, nor lie awake of nights to hear alarms; but harm
Isaac and Jacob Cannon one ha'pence and levari facias, fi. fa.!"
"And fee-fo-fum," ejaculated Jimmy, cheerfully; "I've hearn it before."
Looking again with some curiosity at his companion, Phœbus saw that he
was not beyond fifty years of age, of a spare, lofty figure—at least six feet
four high—sitting straight and graceful as an Indian, his clothes well-
tailored, his countenance and features both stern and refined; every feature
perfected, and all keen without being hard or angular—and yet Jimmy did
not like him. There seemed to have been made a commodore or a general—
some one designed for deeds of chivalry and great philanthropy; and yet
around and between the dancing eyes spider lines were drawn, as if the fine
high brain of Jacob Cannon had put aside matters that matched it and
meddled with nothing that ascended higher above the world than the long
white bridge of his nose. His sentiments apparently fell no further towards
his heart than that; his brain belonged to the bridge of his nose.
"Another Meshach Milburn, by smoke!" concluded Jimmy.
After a little pause Phœbus inquired into the character of the people in this
apparently new region of country.
"The quotient of much misplanting and lawyering is the lands on the
Nanticoke," spoke the gray-nosed Apollo; "the piece of country directly
before us, in the rear of my neighbor Johnson's cross-roads, was an old
Indian reservation for seventy years, and so were three thousand acres to
our right, on Broad Creek. The Indian is a bad factor to civilize his white

neighbors; he does not know the luxury of the law, that grand contrivance to
make the equation between the business man and the herd. Ha, ha!"
Mr. Cannon chuckled as if he, at least, appreciated the law, and turned the
fine horsy bridge of his nose, all gray with dancing eyelight, enjoyingly
upon Mr. Phœbus.
"The Indians were long imposed upon, and when they went away, at the
brink of the Revolutionary War, they left a demoralized white race; and
others who moved in upon the deserted lands of the Nanticokes were, if
possible, more Indian than the Indians. This peninsula never produced a
great Indian, but when Ebenezer Johnson settled on Broad Creek it
possessed a greater savage than Tecumseh. He took what he wanted and
appealed to nature, like the Indian. He stole nothing; he merely took it. He
served, with anything convenient, from his fists to a blunderbuss, his fi. fa.
and his ca. sa. upon wondering but submissive mankind. Need I say that
this was before the perfect day of Isaac and Jacob Cannon?"
"They would have socked it to him, I reckon," Jimmy exclaimed,
consonantly.
Mr. Jacob Cannon gave a tender smile, such as the gray horse emits at the
prospect of oats, and continued:
"Such was the multiplicand to make the future race. Here, too, raged the
boundary-line debate between Penns and Calverts, with occasional raids
and broken heads, and a noble suit in chancery of fifty years, till no man's
title was known, and, instead of improving their lands, our voluptuous
predecessors improved chiefly their opportunities. You cut sundry cords of
wood and hauled it to the landing, and Ebenezer Johnson coolly scowed it
over to his paradise at the mouth of Broad Creek. You had a little parcel of
negroes, but the British war-ships, in two successive wars, lay in the river
mouth and beckoned them off. Having no interest in any certain property,
the foresters of the Nanticoke would rather trade with the enemy than fight
for foolish ideas; and so this region was more than half Tory, and is still half
passive, the other half predatory. To neither half of such a quotient belongs
the house of Isaac and Jacob Cannon!"

His nostrils swelled a trifle with military spirit, and he raised the bridge of
his nose delicately, turning to observe his instinctive companion.
"If it's any harm I won't ask it," the easy-going mariner spoke, "but air you
two Cannons ary kin to ole Patty Cannon?"
Mr. Cannon smiled.
"In Adam all sinned—there we may have been connected," he said. "The
question you ask may one day be actionable, sir. The Cannons are a
numerous people in our region, of fair substance, such as we have, but they
showed nothing to vary the equation of subsistence here till there arose the
mother of Isaac and Jacob Cannon. She was a remarkable woman;
unassisted, she procured the charter for Cannon's Ferry, and made the port
settlement of that name by the importance her ferry acquired; and when she
died there were found in her house nine hundred dollars in silver—for she
never would take any paper money—the earnings of that sequestered ferry,
to start her sons on their career. She knew the peculiar character of some of
her neighbors—how lightly meum and tuum sat upon their fears or
consciences—but she kept no guard except her own good gray eyes and
dauntless heart over that accumulating pile of little sixpences, for there was
but one spirit as bold as she in all this region of the world—"
"And that, I reckon," observed Jimmy Phœbus, "was ole Patty Cannon
herself."
Mr. Jacob Cannon slightly bowed his head, and spoke aloud from an inner
communion:
"Forgive me, mother, that I make the comparison! Thy frugal oil, that
burned with pure and lonely widow's flame at Cannon's Ferry window, the
traveller hailed with comfort in his heart, and blessed the enterprise. But to
compound the equation another unknown quantity of female force arose
beside my mother's lamp. A certain young Cannon, distantly of our stock,
must needs go see the world, and he returned with a fair demon of a bride,
and settled, too, at Cannon's Ferry. He lived to see the wondrous serpent he
had warmed in his arms, and died, they say, of the sting. But she lived on,
and, shrinking back into the woods to a little farm my mother's sons rented
to her, she lighted there a Jack-o'-the-lantern many a traveller has pursued

who never returned to tell. With Ebenezer Johnson's progeny and her own
siren sisters, who followed Madame Cannon to the Nanticoke, the nucleus
of a settlement began, and has existed for twenty years, that only the
Almighty's venire facias can explore."[2]
"That's my arrand, Jacob Cannon," quietly remarked Jimmy Phœbus. "I'm a
pore man from Prencess Anne. If you took me for a nigger-dealer you did
me as pore a compliment as when I asked if you was Patty Cannon's kin.
But I have got just one gal to love and just one life to lose, an' if God takes
me thar, I'm a-goin' to Johnson's Cross-roads."
Mr. Jacob Cannon turned and examined his companion with some twinkling
care, but showed no personal concern.
"Every man must be his own security, my dark-skinned friend, till he can
find a bailsman. That place I never take—neither the debtor's nor the
security. The firm of Isaac and Jacob Cannon allows no trespass, and further
concern themselves not. But we are at the Nanticoke."
"I'm obliged to you for the lift, Mr. Jacob Cannon," said Jimmy, springing
down, "and hope you may never find it inconvenient to have let such a pack
of wolves use your neighborhood to trespass on human natur."