"Your wife died at Cambridge." "Your daughter is very ill at Wilmington."

"To Wilmington!" cried Judge Custis, staggering up. "Oh, my daughter! I have killed her."

CHAPTER XXXVII.

SPIRITS OF THE PAST.

"What do they say, William, about Jack Wonnell's being found shot dead?"

"It is generally said that he was killed by the negroes for gallantries to their color. Some talk of arresting little Roxy Custis."

"What do you say, William Tilghman?"

"I can say nothing. The night I drove Virgie to Snow Hill I drove over poor Wonnell's body. A strange negro was seen here - an enemy of your servant, Samson. The new cook at Teackle Hall thinks he fired the shot."

The young rector felt the searching look of those resinous forester's eyes staring him through.

"That shot was meant for me, William Tilghman."

"Perhaps so."

"It was the shot of a hired murderer, who mistook Wonnell's unusual hats for mine, that was not well described to him, or the description of which his drunken and excited memory did not retain."

"Mr. Milburn, please save Vesta this suspicion."

"Oh! that pure soul could not know it," Milburn continued, with a moment's gentleness; "but some of her proud kin, to whom I am less than a dog, did send the assassin. I think I guess the man."

"Do not rush to a conclusion! Remember, Vesta has suffered so much for others' errors."

"He was killed in this room, where Wonnell never came before. The wound shows the shot to have come from a point below, where nothing but Wonnell's hat, and not his features, could be seen. The mistake of bell-crown for steeple-top shows that it was a stranger's job: the poor fool died for me. Now where did the bungler who killed me by proxy come from?"

"I will be frank with you, sir. Joe Johnson, the kidnapper, was also here: Mary says so. To save Virgie from him, I helped her away."

"Now," said Milburn, "what enemy of mine delegated the kidnapper to procure a murderer?"

He waited a moment without response, and answered, in a low tone of voice, his own question:

"The man is at Johnson's Cross Roads: letters from Cambridge tell me so. It was the deceased Mrs. Custis's brother, Allan McLane."

"Again I ask you to think of Vesta and her many sacrifices!"

"I do. I have promised her that she shall never receive a cruel word from me. But I shall not spare my assassins. To them I shall be as one they have killed, and whose blood smokes, for vengeance. I possess the only warrant that can drive them from Maryland."

He laid a roll of bank-notes on the table suggestively.

"No wealth is accumulated in vain," said Meshach Milburn, his delicate nostrils distended and his fine hand pointing to the bank-bills. "Now, war on Johnson's Cross Roads!"