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 Phoebus 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 Phoebus, 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 Phoebus, 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 Phoebus, 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 Cumaean 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 Phoebus 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'Angouleme 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 Phoebus speak to Levin Dennis sharply: