to everything, as Meshach thought, and deepened his personal sense
of unworthiness. He tried to feel angry, but apprehension was too strong
for passion even to be simulated.

"O, discriminating God!" he felt, within, "is it not enough to create us
so unequal that we must also cringe in spirit, and acknowledge it! I
expected to feel triumphant when I lodged my despised hat in this man's
house, but I feel meaner than before."

The room, whose door was opened by the lady's maid, was the library,
containing three cumbrous cases of books, and several portraits in oil,
with deep, gilded frames, a map of Virginia and its northeastern
environs, including all the peninsula south of the Choptank river and
Cape Henlopen; and near the door was a tall clock, that a giant might
stand in, solemnly cogging and waving time, and giving the monotony of
everlasting evening to the place, which was increased by the flickering
fire of wood on the tall brass fire-irons, before which some
high-backed, wide, comfortable leather chairs were drawn, all worn to
luxurious attitudes, as if each had been the skin of Judge Custis and
his companions, recently evacuated.

A woman's rocking-chair was disposed among them, as though every other
chair deferred to it. This was the first article to arrest Milburn's
attention, so different, so suggestive, almost a thing of superstition,
poised, like a woman's instinct and will, upon nothing firm, yet, like
the sphere it moved upon, traversing a greater arc than a giant's seat
would fill. Purity and conquest, power and welcome, seemed to abide
within it, like the empty throne in Parliament.

Milburn, being left alone, touched the fairy rocker with his foot. It
started so easily and so gracefully, that, when it died away, he pressed
his lips to the top of it, nearest where her neck would be, and
whispered aloud, with feeling, "God knows that kiss, at least, was
pure!"

He looked at the portraits, and, though they were not inscribed, he
guessed at them all, right or wrong, from the insight of local lore or
envious interpretation.

"Yon saucy, greedy, superserviceable rogue," thought Meshach, "with wine
and beef in his cheeks, and silver and harlotry in his eye, was the
Irish tavern-keeper of Rotterdam, who kept a heavy score against the
banished princes whom Cromwell's name ever made to swear and shiver, and
they paid him in a distant office in Accomac, where they might never
see him and his bills again, a