this afternoon, aunty, that the Bad Man gave it to him."
"De debbil met him right dar," insisted Aunt Hominy, "in dat ole obergrown churchyard, whar de hymns ob God used to be raised befo' de debbil got it. He says to Meshach: 'I make you de sexton hyar. Go git de spade out yonder, whar de dead-house used to be, an' dig among de graves under de myrtle-vines, an' fin' my hat. As long as ye keep de Lord an' de singin' away from dis yer big forsaken church, you may keep dat hat to measure in eberybody's lan'.' So nobody kin sing or pray in dat church. Nobody but Meshach Milburn ever prays dar. He goes dar sometimes wid his Chrismas-giff on he head, an' prays to de debbil."
Thus does an unwonted fashion arouse unwonted visions, as if it brought to the present day the phantoms which were laid at rest with itself, and they walked into simple minds, and produced superstition there.
Aunt Hominy never was stimulated to inventions of this kind, but she immediately absorbed them, and they became religious beliefs with her. Her manner, highly animated by her terror and belief, produced more and more superstition in the minds of the girls and children, and the conversation fell off—the little negroes wandering hither and thither, unable to sleep, yet unable to attract sufficient attention from any one, till Judge Custis, who had been waiting for hours for his creditor to go, slipped down the back stairs in his old slippers, and came to the kitchen among the colored people for company's sake.
His fine presence, and familiar, if superior, address, put a new complexion at once on the African end of the house.
He picked up all the children by twos or threes, woolled them, chased them, tossed them, and drove the lurid images of Aunt Hominy's mind out of their spirits, and then caught the two young girls, and set Roxy on his shoulder, and caught Virgie by the waist, and finally piled them on Aunt Hominy, who ran behind her biscuit-block, and he bunched all the children upon the party.
"De Lord a massy, Judge!" exclaimed Aunt Hominy, delighted, and showing her white teeth, whichever side she revealed. "Go 'long, Judge, Missy Custis ketch you! Miss Vessy's a-comin', befor' de Lawd!"
The children were screaming, getting into the riot more, while pretending to try to get out, invading the Judge's back, and rubbing their clean wool into his whiskers, and the two neat servants, brought up like white children in his family, were not unaccustomed to either jovial handling or petting from their master, which he commonly concluded by a present of some kind.
"Old woman," said the Judge to Aunt Hominy, "can you give me a bit of broiled something for my stomach? I want to eat it right here."
"Ha! yah! Don't got nothin' but a young chicken, marster! Mebbe I kin git ye a squab outen de pigeon-house in de gable-yend."
"That's it, Hominy!" exclaimed Judge Custis; "a tender squab, a little toast in cream, a glass of morning milk, and a bunch of fresh celery, will just raise my pulse, and put courage into me. Get it, my faithful old girl; it's the last I may ask of you, for old Samson Hat is going to own you next."
"Me? No, sah! I'll run away from Prencess Anne fust. De man dat cleans ole Meshach Milburn's debbil hat sha'n't nebber hab me."
"Well, it'll be one of you. If you don't take Samson, Roxy must, or Virgie. The old fellow will be very influential with our new master, and, Hominy, we're all depending on you to make him so comfortable that he will just keep the family together."
Sobriety came in on this attempted witticism, and the old cook saw a film grow into the Judge's smiling eyes.
"Old marster!" she exclaimed, raising her hands, "you's jess a-sottin' dar, an' breakin' your poor heart. Don't I know when you is a-makin' believe? Mebbe dis night is de las' we'll ever see you in your own warm, nice kitchen, an' never mo', dear ole marster, kin Hominy brile you a bird or season de soup you like. Bless God, dis time we'll git de squab an' de celery an' de toast, befo' ole Meshach Milburn measures all we got in!"
While the children crawled around the Judge's knees, setting up a dismal wail to see him sob, the two neat house girls, forgetting every contingency to themselves, sobbed also, like his own daughters, to see him unmanned; but Aunt Hominy only felt desperately energetic at the chance to cook the last supper of the Custis household.
She lighted a brand of pine in the fire, and started one of the stable boys up a ladder by its light to ransack the pigeon-cote, and in a very little while both a chicken and a bird were broiled and set upon the kitchen-table upon a spotless cloth, and the plume of lily-white celery, and the smoking toast in velvet cream, warmed the Judge's nostrils, and dried his tears.
Roxy stood behind him to wait upon his wishes; Virgie subdued every expression of grief, and comforted the children, and poor Aunt Hominy, with silent tears streaming down her cheeks to see him eat and suffer, kept up a clatter of epicurean talk, lest he might turn and see her miserable. As he finished his meal, and took out his gold tooth-pick, and felt a comfortable joy of such misery and sympathy, Vesta opened the door, and said:
"Papa!"
"My child?"
"Let me speak with you."
Judge Custis rose, and raised his hands to Aunt Hominy in speechless recognition of her service; but not till the door closed behind him did the old cook's cry burst through her quivering lips:
"Oh! chillen, chillen, he'll never eat no mo' like dat again. Ole Meshach's measured him in!"
Chapter XI.
DYING PRIDE.
At the termination of Milburn's long visit, Vesta had gone to her own room, and read her passage in the Bible, and said her prayer, and tried to think, but the day's application had been too great to leave her mind its morning energy, when health, which is so much of decision, was elastic in her veins and brain.
She began to see her duty loom up like a prodigious thing on one side, crowding every other consideration out of the way but one—her modesty; and threatening that, which, like a little mouse, ran around and around her mind, timorous, but helpless, and without a hole of escape.
She would cease to be a maid within the circuit of the clock, or forsake her family, and drive that great bloodhound of duty over the threshold of her ruined home.
In the one case lay outward devastation—the red eyes of parents and servants who had not slept all night, and looked at her as their obdurate hostage, and the prying constables lodged upon the premises to see that nothing was smuggled out, the ring of the auctioneer's bell, and the fingering of boors and old gossips over the cherished things of the family, even to her heirlooms, jewelry, and hosiery; the vast old house a hollow barn when these were done, and she and her mother visitors at the jail where her poor father looked through the bars, and bent his head in shame!
Then the servants, one after another, mounted upon the court-house block, the old gray servitors mocked, the little children parted, like calves by the butcher, and the young girls feeling the desperate apprehensions of abuse and violation, that were the other alternative to herself, with whom purity was like the whiteness of the lily, prized more than its beauty of form or its perfume.
She glanced in her mirror by
