it is! To ensnare my innocent daughter in the damned meshes of your principal and interest! Call it malignity—the visitation of your unsocial wrath on man and an angel; but not mercy!"
"Then we will call it compensation," continued Meshach Milburn: "for twenty years I have denied myself everything; you denied yourself nothing. Your substance is wasted; renew it from the abundance of my thrift. It was not with an evil design that I made myself your creditor, although, as the years have rolled onward and solitude chilled my heart, that has always pined for human friendship, I could not but see the kindling glory of your daughter's beauty. Like the schoolboys, the married husbands—yes, like the slaves—I had to admire her. Then, unknowing how deeply you were involved, I found offered to me for sale the paper you had negotiated in Baltimore—paper, Judge Custis, dishonorably negotiated!"
The money-lender rose and walked to the sad man's bed, and held the hand, full of these notes, boldly over him.
"It was despair, Milburn!" moaned the Judge.
"And so was my resolution. Said I: 'This lofty gentleman would cheat me, his neighbor, who have suffered all the contumely of this good society, and on starveling opportunity have slowly recovered independence. Now he shall take my place in the forest, or I will wear my hat at the head of his family table.'"
"A dreadful revenge!" whispered Custis, with a shudder. "Such a hat is worse than a cloven foot. In God's name! whence came that ominous hat?"
Milburn took up the hat and held it before the lamplight, so that its shadow stood gigantic against the wall.
"Who would think," he said, sarcastically, "that a mere head-covering, elegant in its day, could make more hostility than an idle head? I will tell you the silly secret of it. When I came from the obscurity of the forest, sensitive, and anxious to make my way, and slowly gathered capital and knowledge, a person in New York directed a letter of inquiry to me. It told how a certain Milburn, a Puritan or English Commonwealth man, had risen to great distinction in that province, and had revolutionized its government and suffered the penalty of high-treason."
"True enough," said Judge Custis, pouring a second glass of brandy; "Milburn and Leisler were executed in New York during the lifetime of the first Custis. They anticipated the expulsion of James II., and were entrapped by their provincial enemies and made political martyrs."
"The inquirer," said Meshach, "who had obtained my address in the course of business, related, that after Milburn's death his brethren and their families had sailed to the Chesapeake, where the Protestants had successfully revolutionized for King William, and, making choice of poor lands, they had become obscure. He asked me if the court-house records made any registry of their wills."
"Of course you found them?"
"Yes. It was a revelation to me, and gave me the honorable sense of some origin and quality. I traced myself back to the earliest folios, at the close of the seventeenth century."
"Any property, Milburn?" asked the Judge, voluptuous and reanimated again.
"My great-grandfather had left his son nothing but a Hat."
"Not uncommon!" exclaimed Judge Custis. "Our early wills contain little but legacies of wearing apparel, household articles, bedding, pots and kettles, and the elements of civilization."
"The will on record said: 'I give to my eldest son, Meshach Milburn, my best Hat, and no more of my estate.'"
"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the Judge, loudly. "Genteel to the last! A hat of fashion, no doubt, made in London; quite too ceremonious and topgallant for these colonies. He left it to his eldest son, en-tiledit, we may say. Ho! ho!"
"When my indignation was over, I took the same view you do, Judge Custis, that it was a bequest of dignity, not of burlesque; and I made some inquiries for that best Hat. It was a legend among my forest kin, had been seen by very old people, was celebrated in its day, and worn by my grandfather thankfully. He left it to my father, still a hat of reputation—"
"Still en-tiled to the oldest son! Ha, ha! Milburn."
"My father sold the hat to Charles Wilson Peale, who was native to our peninsula, and knew the ancient things existing here that would help him to form Peale's Museum during the last century. I found the hat in that museum, covering the mock-figure of Guy Fawkes!"
"Conspirator's hat; bravo!" exclaimed the Judge.
"It had been used for the heads of George Calvert and Shakespeare, but in time of religious excitements was proclaimed to be the true hat of Guy Fawkes. I reclaimed it, and brought it to Princess Anne, and in a vain moment put it on my head and walked into the street. It was assailed with halloos and ribaldry."
"It was another Shirt of Nessus, Milburn; it poisoned your life, eh?"
"Perhaps so," replied Milburn, with intensity. "They say what is one man's drink is another man's poison. You will accept that hat on the head of your son-in-law, or no more drink out of the Custis property!"
Chapter V.
THE BOG-ORE TRACT.
Resolution of character and executive power had been trifled away by Judge Custis. The trader had concluded their interview with a decision and fierceness that left paralysis upon the gentleman's mind. He saw, in sad fancy, the execution served upon his furniture, the amazement of his wife, the pallor of his daughter, the indignation of his sons. He also shrank before the impending failure of his furnace and abandonment of the bog-ore tract, on which he had raised so much state and local fame; people would say: "Custis was a fool, and deceived himself, while old Steeple-top Milburn played upon the Custises' vanity, and turned them into the street."
"No doubt," thought the Judge, "that fellow, Milburn, can get anything when he gets my house. The poor folks' vote he may command, because he is of their class. He is a lender to many of the rich. Who could have suspected his intelligence? His address, too? He handled me as if I were a forester and he a judge. A very, very remarkable man!" finished Judge Custis, taking the last of the brandy.
He was interrupted by the entrance of Samson Hat.
"Where's your master, boy?" asked the Judge.
"He's gone up to de ole house, Judge, where his daddy and mammy died. It's de place where I hides after my fights."
"May the ague strike him there! Let the bilious sweat from the mill-pond be strong to-night, that, like Judas of old, his bowels may drop out! But, no," continued the irresolute man, "I have no right to hate him."
"Judge," softly said the old negro, "my marster is a sick man. He ain't happy like you an' me. He's 'bitious. He's lonely. Dat's enough to spile angels. But a gooder man I never knowed, 'cept in de onpious sperrit. He's proud as Lucifer. He's full of hate at Princess Anne and all de people. Your darter may git a better man, not a pyorer one."
"Purity goes a very little way," exclaimed the Judge, "on the male side of marriage contracts. It's always assumed, and never expected. You need not remember, Samson,
