"Ho! Samson, boy! It is time!"

"Yes, marster!" answered the negro in the loft.

As the negro gathered himself up and pa.s.sed down the stairs, he saw Meshach Milburn before the fire, stirring the coals. Pa.s.sing out, Samson stood a moment at the gate, and lounged up the road, not to lose his master. As he stood there, flames burst out of the old hut and glistened on the evergreen forest, lighting the tops of the mossy cypresses in the mill-pond, and revealing the forms of the sandy fields. Before he could start back Samson saw his master's figure go round and round the house, lighting the weather-boarding from place to place with a torch; and then the low figure, capped with the long hat, came up the road as if at mighty strides, so lengthened by the fire.

"No need of alarm, boy!" exclaimed the filial incendiary. "Henceforth my only ancestral hall is _here_!"

He held the ancient tile up in the light of the blaze.

"Ah, marster!" said the negro, "yo' hat will never give comfort like a home, fine as de hat may be, mean as de roof! De hat will never hold two heads, and dat makes happiness."

"The hat, at least," answered Milburn, bitterly, "will cover me where I go. Such rotted roofs as that was make captives of bright souls."

They looked on the fire in silence a few minutes.

"You have burnt me out, boss," said old Samson, finally. "I ain't got no place to go an' hide when I fights, now. It makes me feel solemn."

"Peace!" replied Meshach Milburn. "Now for the horses and Princess Anne!"

CHAPTER VI.

THE CUSTISES RUINED.

Vesta Custis, dressing in her chamber, heard early wheels upon the morning air, and looking through the blinds saw a double team coming up the road from Hardship.

"Mother," she said, "is that father coming, yonder? No, it is not his driver."

"Why, Vesta!" exclaimed Mrs. Custis, "that is old Milburn's man."

"Samson Hat? so it is. What is he doing with two horses?"

Here Vesta laughed aloud, and began to skip about in her long, slender, worked slippers, whose insteps would spare a mouse darting under.

"Mamma, it is Milburn himself, in a hack and span. See there; the steeple-top hat, copper buckle and all! Isn't he too funny for anything!

But, dear me! he is staring right up at this window. Let us duck!"

Vesta's long, ivory-grained arms, divided from her beautiful shoulders only by a spray of lace, pulled her mother down.

"Don't be afraid, dear! he can see nothing but the blinds. Perhaps he is looking for the Judge."

Vesta rose again in her white morning-gown, like a stag rising from a snow-drift. A long, trembling movement, the result of t.i.ttering, pa.s.sed down the graceful column of her back.

"He sits there like an Indian riding past in a show, mamma! Did you ever see such a hat?"

"I think it must be buggy by this time," said the mother; and both of them shook with laughter again. "Unless," added Mrs. Custis, "the bugs are starved out."

"Poor, lonely creature," said Vesta, "he can only wear such a hat from want of understanding."

"His _understanding_ is good enough, dear. He has the green gaiters on."

They laughed again, and Vesta's hair, shaken down by her merriment, fell nearly to her slipper, like the skin of some coal-black beast, that had sprung down a poplar's trunk.

"Ah! well," exclaimed Vesta, as her maid entered and proceeded to wind up this satin cordage on her crown, "what men are in their minds, can woman know? Old ladies, not unfrequently, wear their old coal-scuttle bonnets long past the fashion, but it is from want. This man is his own master and not poor. His companion is a negro, and his taste a mouldy hat, old as America. How happy are we that it is not necessary to pry into such minds! A little refinement is the next blessing to religion."

"Your father's mind is a puzzle, too, Vesta. He has everything which these foresters lack,--education, society, standing, and comforts. But he returns to the forest, like an opossum, the moment your eye is off him. He can't be traced up like this man, by his hat. I think it's a shame on you, particularly. If he don't come home this day, I shall send for my brother and force an account of my property from Judge Custis!"

The wife sat down and began to cry.

"I'll take the carriage after breakfast, mamma, and seek him at the Furnace or wherever he may be. Those bog ores have given him a great deal of trouble."

"I wish I had never heard of bog ore," exclaimed Mrs. Custis. "When the money was in bank, there was no ore about it. He goes to the forest looking like a magistrate and a gentleman; he always comes back looking like a bog-trotter and a drunkard. There must be _women_ in it!"

Here, in an impulse of weak rage, the poor lady got up and walked to her mirror and looked at her face. Apparently satisfied that such charms were trampled on, she dried her tears altogether, and resumed:

"Ginny, go out of the room! (to the neat mulatto la.s.s). Vesta, my dear daughter, I would not cast a stain upon you for the world; but flesh and blood _will_ cry out. If your father don't do better I will separate from him, and leave Princess Anne!"

"Why, _mother_!"

The daughter's bright eyes were large and startled now, and their steel-blue tint grew plainer under her rich black eyebrows.

"I will do it, if I die, unless he reforms!"

"Why, mother!"

Vesta stood with her lips parted, and her beautiful teeth just lacing the coral of the lip. She could say no more for a long moment. Rising as she spoke, with her head thrown back, and her mould the fuller and a pallor in her cheeks, she looked the Eve first hearing the Creator's rebuke.

"A separation in this family?" whispered Vesta. "It would scandalize all Maryland. It would break my heart."

"Darling daughter, my heart must be considered sometimes. I was something before I was a Custis. I am a woman, too."

Vesta, still pale, crossed to her mother's side and kissed her.

"Don't, don't, mamma, ever harbor a thought like that again. You, who have been so brave and patient longer than I have lived!"

"Ah, Vesta, it is the length of injury that wears us out! What if something should happen to us? None are so unfit to bear poverty as we."

"We cannot be poor," said the daughter, soothingly. "Don't you remember, mother, where it says: 'As thy day, so shall thy strength be'?".

"My child," Mrs. Custis replied, "your day is young. Life looks hopeful to you. I am growing old, and where is the arm on which I should be leaning? What are we but two women left? There is another pa.s.sage on which I often think when we sit so often alone: 'Two women shall be grinding at the mill: the one shall be taken and the other left!' Is that you, or is it I? Listen, my child! it is time that you should feel the melancholy truth! Your father's habits have mastered him. He is beyond reclamation!"

Vesta was kneeling, and she slowly raised her head and looked at her mother, with her nostrils dilated. Mrs. Custis felt uneasy before the aroused mind of her child.

"Don't look at me so, Vesta," the poor lady pleaded. "I thought you ought to know it."