The man, without his hat, had somewhat redeemed himself from low conversation and ideas, but now, that he brought this hat in and associated his person with it, she shrank from him as if he had been a triple-hatted Jew, peddling around the premises.

The obnoxious hat also exercised some exciting influence over Meshach Milburn, if his changed manner could be ascribed to that article, for he resumed his strong, wild-man's stare, deepened and lowered his voice, and without waiting for any query or expression of his listener, told the tale.

CHAPTER IX.

HA! HA! THE WOOING ON'T.

It was twilight when Meshach Milburn closed his story, and silence and pallid eve drew together in the Custis sitting-room, resembling the two people there, thinking on matrimony, the one grave as conscious serpenthood could make him, the other fluttering like the charmed bird. Vesta spoke first:

"How intense must be your head to create so many objects around it within the world of a hat! You have only brought the story down a little way towards our times."

"I began the tale of Raleigh out of proportion," said Milburn, "and it grew upon the same scale, like the passion I conceived for you so intensely at the outset, that in the climax of this night I am scarcely begun."

"Yet, like Raleigh, I see the scaffold," said Vesta, with an attempt at humor that for the first time broke her down, and she raised her hands to her face to hush the burst of anguish. It would not be repressed, and one low cry, deep with the sense of desertion and captivity, sounded through the deepening room and smote Milburn's innermost heart. He obeyed an impulse he had not felt since his mother died, starting towards Vesta and throwing his arms around her, and drawing her to his breast.

"Honey, honey," he whispered, kissing her like a child, "don't cry now, honey. It will break my heart."

The act of nature seldom is misinterpreted; Vesta, having labored so long alone with this obdurate man, her young faculties of the head strained by the first encounter beyond her strength, accepted the friendship of his sympathy and contrition, as if he had been her father. In a few moments the paroxysm of grief was past, and she disengaged his arms.

"You are not merciless," said Vesta. "Tell me what I must do! You have broken my father down and he cannot come to my help. Take pity on my inequality and advise me!"

"Alas! child," said Milburn, "my advice must be in my own interest, though I wish I could find your confidence. I am a poor creature, and do not know how. It is you who must encourage the faith I feel starting somewhere in this room, like a chimney swallow that would fain fly out. Chirrup, chirrup to it, and it may come!"

Standing a moment, trying to collect her thoughts and wholly failing, Vesta accepted the confidence he held out to her with open arms. Blushing as she had never blushed in her life, though he could not know it in the evening dark, she walked to him and kissed him once.