are.

Far down this peninsula lies the old town of Snow Hill, on the border of
Virginia; there the pilgrim entered the court-house, and asked to see an
early book of wills, and in it he turned to the name of a maternal
ancestor, of whom grand tales had been told him by an aged relative. His
breath was almost taken by finding the following provisions, dated
February 12, 1800:

"I give and bequeath to my son, Ralph Milbourn, MY BEST HAT, TO HIM AND
HIS ASSIGNEES FOREVER, and no more of my estate.

"I give to Thomas Milbourn my small iron kettle, my brandy still, all my
hand-irons, my pot-rack, and fifteen pounds bond that he gave to my
daughter, Grace Milbourn."

The next day a doctor took the author on his rounds through "the
Forest," as a neighboring tract was almost too invidiously called, and
through a deserted iron-furnace; village almost of the date of these
wills.

Everywhere he went the Entailed Hat seemed, to the stranger in the land
of his forefathers, to appear in the vistas, as if some odd, reverend,
avoided being was wearing it down the defiles of time. Now like Hester
Prynne wearing her Scarlet Letter, and now like Gaston in his Iron Mask,
this being took both sexes and different characters, as the author
weighed the probabilities of its existence. At last he began to know it,
and started to portray it in a little tale.

The story broke from its confines as his own family generation had
broken from that forest, and sought a larger hemisphere; yet, wherever
the mystic Hat proceeded, his truant fancy had also been led by his
mother's hand.

Often had she told him of old Patty Cannon and her kidnapper's den, and
her death in the jail of his native town. He found the legend of that
dreaded woman had strengthened instead of having faded with time, and
her haunts preserved, and eye-witnesses of her deeds to be still living.

Hence, this romance has much local truth in it, and is not only the
narration of an episode, but the story of a large region comprehending
three state jurisdictions, and also of that period when modern life
arose upon the ruins of old colonial caste.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

I. TWO HAT WEARERS 1
II. JUDGE AND DAUGHTER 6
III. THE FORESTERS 15
IV. D