"I expected this scene," said Meshach Milburn. "It could not have been avoided. I was bound in conscience and in common-sense to make you the only proposition which could save you from ruin. For, Judge Custis, you are a ruined man!"

Overcome with excitement and suspended stimulation, the old Judge fell back on his pillow and began to sob.

"Give him brandy," said Meshach Milburn, "here is the bottle! He needs it now."

The wretched gentleman eagerly drank the proffered draught from the negro's hands. His fury did not revive, and he covered his face with his palms and moaned piteously.

"Judge Custis," remarked Meshach Milburn, "if the apparent social distance between us could be lessened by any argument, I might make one. For the difference is in appearance only. The healthy flesh which gives you and yours stature and beauty is a matter of food alone. My stock has survived five generations of such diet as has bent the spines of the forest pigs and stunted the oxen. Money and family joy will give me children comely again. My life has been hard but pure."

The old Judge felt the last unconscious reflection.

"Yes," he uttered, solemnly, "no doubt Heaven marked me for some such degradation as this, when I yielded to low propensities, and sought my pleasure and companions in the huts of the forest!"

"You claim descent from the Stuart Restoration: I know the tale. A creditor of the two exiled royal brothers for sundry tavern loans and tipples drew for his obligation an office in far-off Virginia. Seizures, confiscations, the slave-trade, marriages - in short, the long game of advantage - built up the fortunes of the Custises, until they expired in a certain Judge, whose notes of hand a hard man, forest-born, held over the Judge's head on what seemed hard conditions, but conditions in which was every quality of mercy, except consideration for your pride."

The Judge made a laugh like a howl.

"Mercy?" he exclaimed, "you do not know what it is! To ensnare my innocent daughter in the damned meshes of your principal and interest! Call it malignity - the visitation of your unsocial wrath on man and an angel; but not mercy!"

"Then we will call it compensation," continued Meshach Milburn: "for twenty years I have denied myself everything; you denied yourself nothing. Your substance is wasted; renew it from the abundance of my thrift. It was not with an evil design that I made myself your creditor, although, as the years have rolled onward and solitude chilled my heart, that has always pined for human friendship, I could not but see the kindling glory of your daughter's beauty. Like the schoolboys, the married husbands - yes, like the slaves - I had to admire her. Then, unknowing how deeply you were involved, I found offered to me for sale the paper you had negotiated in Baltimore - paper, Judge Custis, dishonorably negotiated!"