man and I must see one or the
other die. You do not know how easy it is for a woman to nurse a man.
Though love might make the task more grateful, yet gratitude will do
much to sweeten it. He has loved me and taken the shadow from your old
age for me. Shall I leave him here to feel that I despise him? No."

She kissed her father, and gave him his cane.

"Come back this afternoon, my love," she said to him.

"Nothing on earth is like you!" exclaimed the old man. "I fear you are
not mine."

"Yes," Vesta said, "you are full of good, wherever you may have
strayed."

As the sound of his feet passed from the doorway below, the sick man,
with a sigh as from burning fire, opened his eyes and looked around.
They fell upon her picture.

"What is that?" he murmured; "I dreamed nothing like that, just now."

"It is my picture. I am here," Vesta said, bending over him. "Don't you
know me?"

"Who are you, dear lady?" he breathed, with fever-weakened eye-sockets,
and mind struggling up to his distended orbs, "do I know you?"

"Yes, I am Vesta--Vesta Custis, I was. I am your wife."

His eyes opened wide, as if hearing some wonderful news.

"Wife? what is that? My wife? No."

"Yes, I am Vesta Milburn, your wife."

He seemed to remember, and, with compassion for him, she stooped and
kissed him.

"God bless you!" he sighed, and passed away into the Upas shades again.

At that minute the mocking-bird flew in the open window and fluttered
above the lowly bed, and perched upon the headboard and began to sing:

"'Sband! 'sband! see! see! Vesty, sweet! Vesty, sweet! Ha, ha! hurrah!"

CHAPTER XV.

THE KIDNAPPER.

It seemed to Judge Daniel Custis as he walked abroad into the Sunday
sunshine, that he had never seen a more perfect day. The leaves were
turning on the great sycamore-trees, and the maples along the rise in
the road wore their most delicate garments of nankeen, while some young
hickories, loaded with nuts, and a high gum-tree, splendid in finery,
beckoned him out their way, across the Manokin bridge to the opposite
hill, where the Presbyterian church overlooked the town.

The Judge, whose eyes were filled with happy tears, partly at the real
relief to his circumstances accomplished by Vesta's great sacrifice, and
partly by the scene just closed, of her natural honor and fidelity to
the man who had forced her wedding vows from her, took the northern
course and crossed the little bridge, and as he went u