the blood that might propel his judgment. They heard him mutter,

"No business prudence--yet plausible, persuasive--might do it well."

The Judge spoke now, with some firmness:

"Milburn, there is no use of your rebelling. Here you are and here you
will lie till nature does her restoration, assisted by this medicine I
have brought you. You must undergo calomel, and this quinine must set on
its work of several weeks to break up the regularity of these chills. In
the meantime, as your interests are also Vesta's, and Vesta's are mine,
let me serve her, if not you."

The positive tone influenced the weakened system of the patient. He
looked at all three of the observers, and said to Tilghman, "William, I
might send you but for your calling; leave me with the Judge a little
while, both you and Rhoda."

Rhoda took the Conestoga bonnet from the top of the Entailed Hat box,
and arrayed herself in it, to the rector's exceeding wonder.

"Let's you and me go take a little walk," she said, putting her hand in
his arm with a quiet confidence in which was a spark of Meshach's will.
"I ain't afraid of Princess Anne people, if they are proud. Mise Somers
says King Solomons was no better than a lily outen the pond, and said so
himself."

The young man, sincere as his humility was, blushed a little at the idea
of walking through his native town with that bonnet at his side, he
being of one of the self-conscious, high-viewing families of the old
peninsula--his grand-uncle the staff-officer of Washington, and
messenger from Yorktown to Congress with the news, "Cornwallis has
fallen;" but it was his chivalric sense, and not his piety, which
immediately dispelled the last touch of coxcombry, when he felt that a
lady had requested him.

"With happiness, Miss Holland;" and he did not feel one shrinking
thought again as he ran the gantlet of the idle fellows of the town,
many of them his former vagrant playmates. Rhoda was perfectly happy. He
would have taken her to his grandmother's, with whom he kept house, but
that aristocratic old dowager might say something, he considered, to
destroy Rhoda's confidence in her elegant appearance and easy
vocabulary; and they walked past Teackle Hall, where Vesta saw them, and
opened the door and made them come in and eat a little. Rhoda at first
showed some uneasiness under this great pile of habitation, but Vesta
was so natural and gracious that the shyness wore off, and, at a fitting
moment, the