y heart
that I have put it before a very large interest about which I have no
time to lose, and still am helpless upon this bed. I will trust you to
do my errand. Go to that chest, Judge Custis, and you will find a
package of papers in the cedar till at the end. Bring them here."

As the Judge opened the old chest a musty smell, as of mummies wrapped
in herbs, ascended into his nose, and he saw some faded clothes, as
those of poor people deceased, male and female, lying within. The
mocking-bird piped a noisy warning as he raised the lid of the till and
saw the desired papers among a parcel of spotted and striped bird-eggs:

"Come see! come see! Meshach! he! he! sweet!"

"Now open the window yonder," said Meshach, taking the papers, "and let
Tom fly out. He starts my nerves. Wh-oo-t, whi-it, Tom!"

The mocking-bird, spreading its wings and tail, and striking obstinately
towards its master a minute, as he whistled, flew out of the window and
settled in the old willow below, and had a Sunday-afternoon concert,
calling the passing dogs by name, whistling to them, and deceiving cats
and chickens with invitations they familiarly heard, to eat, to shoo, to
scat, and to roost.

"If he regulates his wife like that bird," the Judge spoke to himself,
"she will fly to heaven soon."

Milburn opened the papers, counted them, and handed them to his
father-in-law.

"The papers will be plain to you, Judge Custis, after I have made a few
words of explanation. You well know that the canal between the Delaware
and Chesapeake is finished, and vessels are now passing through it from
bay to bay. It is taking one hundred dollars a day tolls, and twenty
vessels already go past between sun and sun, though the size of the
shipping of the cities it connects has not yet been adapted to its
proportions. It has been a cheap and quick work, costing something above
two millions of dollars, taking only five years of time; and yet it has
begun its mercantile life by a cheat upon a man to whom it is indebted
as a promoter and contractor, and to whom I have advanced the means to
compel justice and damages."

"Well, well, Milburn; I must pay tribute to your enterprise. The era of
these great carrying corporations has barely begun, and you stake your
little fortune against one of them that is backed by the great city of
Philadelphia!"

"The canal passes through the state of Delaware, in which is three
quarters of its little length of only fourteen