or the difference is in appearance only. The healthy flesh which gives
you and yours stature and beauty is a matter of food alone. My stock has
survived five generations of such diet as has bent the spines of the
forest pigs and stunted the oxen. Money and family joy will give me
children comely again. My life has been hard but pure."

The old Judge felt the last unconscious reflection.

"Yes," he uttered, solemnly, "no doubt Heaven marked me for some such
degradation as this, when I yielded to low propensities, and sought my
pleasure and companions in the huts of the forest!"

"You claim descent from the Stuart Restoration: I know the tale. A
creditor of the two exiled royal brothers for sundry tavern loans and
tipples drew for his obligation an office in far-off Virginia. Seizures,
confiscations, the slave-trade, marriages--in short, the long game of
advantage--built up the fortunes of the Custises, until they expired in
a certain Judge, whose notes of hand a hard man, forest-born, held over
the Judge's head on what seemed hard conditions, but conditions in which
was every quality of mercy, except consideration for your pride."

The Judge made a laugh like a howl.

"_Mercy?_" he exclaimed, "you do not know what it is! To ensnare my
innocent daughter in the damned meshes of your principal and interest!
Call it malignity--the visitation of your unsocial wrath on man and an
angel; but not mercy!"

"Then we will call it compensation," continued Meshach Milburn: "for
twenty years I have denied myself everything; you denied yourself
nothing. Your substance is wasted; renew it from the abundance of my
thrift. It was not with an evil design that I made myself your creditor,
although, as the years have rolled onward and solitude chilled my heart,
that has always pined for human friendship, I could not but see the
kindling glory of your daughter's beauty. Like the schoolboys, the
married husbands--yes, like the slaves--I had to admire her. Then,
unknowing how deeply you were involved, I found offered to me for sale
the paper you had negotiated in Baltimore--paper, Judge Custis,
dishonorably negotiated!"

The money-lender rose and walked to the sad man's bed, and held the
hand, full of these notes, boldly over him.

"It was despair, Milburn!" moaned the Judge.

"And so was my resolution. Said I: 'This lofty gentleman would cheat me,
his neighbor, who have suffered all the contumely of this _good
society_, and on starve