ey was Meshach's sole pursuit, and
he spent nothing upon himself.

Without a vice, it appeared that Meshach Milburn had not an emotion,
hardly a virtue. He had neither pity nor curiosity, visitors nor
friends, professions nor apologies. Two or three times he had been
summoned on a jury, when he put on his best suit and his steeple-crown,
and formally went through his task. He attended the Episcopal worship
every Sunday and great holiday, wearing inevitably the ancient tile,
which often of itself drew audience more than the sermon. He gave a very
small sum of money and took a cheap pew, and read from his prayer-book
many admonitions he did not follow.

He was not litigious, but there was no evading the perfectness of his
contracts. His searching and large hazel eyes, almost proud and quite
unkindly, and his Indian-like hair, were the leading elements of a face
not large, but appearing so, as if the buried will of some long
frivolous family had been restored and concentrated in this man and had
given a bilious power to his brows and jaws and glances.

His eccentricity had no apparent harmony with anything else nor any
especial sensibility about it. The boys hooted his hat, and the little
girls often joined in, crying "Steeple-top! He's got it on! Meshach's
loose!" But he paid no attention to anybody, until once, at court time,
some carousing fellows hired Jack Wonnell to walk up to Meshach Milburn
and ask to swap a new bell-crown for the old decrepit steeple-top.
Looking at Wonnell sternly in the face, Meshach hissed, "You miserable
vagrant! Nature meant you to go bareheaded. Beware when you speak to me
again!"

"I was afraid of him," said Jack Wonnell, afterwards. "He seemed to have
a loaded pistol in each eye."

No other incident, beyond indiscriminate ridicule, was recorded of this
hat, except once, when a group of little children in front of Judge
Custis's house began to whisper and titter, and one, bolder than the
rest, the Judge's daughter, gravely walked up to the unsocial man; it
was the first of May, and he was in his best suit:

"Sir," she said, "may I put a rose in your old hat?"

The harsh man looked down at the little queenly child, standing straight
and slender, with an expression on her face of composure and courtesy.
Then he looked up and over the Judge's residence to see if any
mischievous or presuming person had prompted this act. No one was in
sight, and the other children had run away.

"Why