"De Lord a massy, Judge!" exclaimed Aunt Hominy, delighted, and showing her white teeth, whichever side she revealed. "Go 'long, Judge, Missy Custis ketch you! Miss Vessy's a-comin', befor' de Lawd!"

The children were screaming, getting into the riot more, while pretending to try to get out, invading the Judge's back, and rubbing their clean wool into his whiskers, and the two neat servants, brought up like white children in his family, were not unaccustomed to either jovial handling or petting from their master, which he commonly concluded by a present of some kind.

"Old woman," said the Judge to Aunt Hominy, "can you give me a bit of broiled something for my stomach? I want to eat it right here."

"Ha! yah! Don't got nothin' but a young chicken, marster! Mebbe I kin git ye a squab outen de pigeon-house in de gable-yend."

"That's it, Hominy!" exclaimed Judge Custis; "a tender squab, a little toast in cream, a glass of morning milk, and a bunch of fresh celery, will just raise my pulse, and put courage into me. Get it, my faithful old girl; it's the last I may ask of you, for old Samson Hat is going to own you next."

"Me? No, sah! I'll run away from Prencess Anne fust. De man dat cleans ole Meshach Milburn's debbil hat sha'n't nebber hab me."

"Well, it'll be one of you. If you don't take Samson, Roxy must, or Virgie. The old fellow will be very influential with our new master, and, Hominy, we're all depending on you to make him so comfortable that he will just keep the family together."

Sobriety came in on this attempted witticism, and the old cook saw a film grow into the Judge's smiling eyes.

"Old marster!" she exclaimed, raising her hands, "you's jess a-sottin' dar, an' breakin' your poor heart. Don't I know when you is a-makin' believe? Mebbe dis night is de las' we'll ever see you in your own warm, nice kitchen, an' never mo', dear ole marster, kin Hominy brile you a bird or season de soup you like. Bless God, dis time we'll git de squab an' de celery an' de toast, befo' ole Meshach Milburn measures all we got in!"

While the children crawled around the Judge's knees, setting up a dismal wail to see him sob, the two neat house girls, forgetting every contingency to themselves, sobbed also, like his own daughters, to see him unmanned; but Aunt Hominy only felt desperately energetic at the chance to cook the last supper of the Custis household.

She lighted a brand of pine in the fire, and started one of the stable boys up a ladder by its light to ransack the pigeon-cote, and in a very little while both a chicken and a bird were broiled and set upon the kitchen-table upon a spotless cloth, and the plume of lily-white celery, and the smoking toast in velvet cream, warmed the Judge's nostrils, and dried his tears.

Roxy stood behind him to wait upon his wishes; Virgie subdued every expression of grief, and comforted the children, and poor Aunt Hominy, with silent tears streaming down her cheeks to see him eat and suffer, kept up a clatter of epicurean talk, lest he might turn and see her miserable. As he finished his meal, and took out his gold tooth-pick, and felt a comfortable joy of such misery and sympathy, Vesta opened the door, and said: