ny's kivered herseff wid cammermile, an'
drunk biled lizzer tea. Hominy's gone an' got Quaker."

"What's _Quaker_, Aunt Hominy?"

"Quaker," the old woman repeated, backing out and looking down,
"Quaker's what keeps him from a measurin' of me in!"

Then, as Vesta drew on her bonnet and shawl, having taken her coffee and
toast, the old servant, gliding back in the depths of Teackle Hall,
raised a wild African croon, as over the dead, giving her voice a
musical inflection like the jingle of Juba rhyme:

"Good-bye, Miss Vessy! Good-bye, Aunt Hominy's baby! Good-bye, dear
young missis! Good-bye, my darlin' chile, furever, furever, an' O
furever, little Vessy Custis, O chile, farewell!"

The tears raining upon her cheeks, her wild, wringing hands and upflung
arms and shape convulsed, Vesta remembered long, and thought, as she
left Teackle Hall with Virgie, that some African superstition had, by
the aid of dreams, drawn into a passing excitement the faithful
servant's brain.

At the corner of old Front Street, and extending almost out upon the
little Manokin bridge, stood Meshach Milburn's two-story house and
store, with a door upon both streets. Though planted low, in a hollow,
it stood forward like Milburn's challenging countenance, unsupported by
any neighbors.

"Don't it look like a witch's, Missy?" Virgie said, as Vesta took in its
not unpicturesque outlines and crude plank carpentry, the weather-rotted
roof, the decrepit chimney at the far end, the one garret window in the
sharp gable, the scant little windows above stairs, and the doors low to
the sand.

"It may have been the pride of the town fifty years ago, Virgie. I have
passed it many a day, looking with mischievous curiosity for the
steeple-hat, to show that to some city friend, little thinking I must
ever enter the house. But hear that wilful bird singing so loud! Where
is it?"

"I can't tell to save my life. It ain't in the tree yonder. It's the
first bird up this mornin', Miss Vessy, sho'!"

"Is not that larger door standing ajar, the one with the four panels in
it?" Vesta asked. "Yes, it is unfastened and partly open."

The blood left Vesta's heart a moment, as the thought ran through her
mind: "He has been watched, followed home, and murdered!"

The idea seemed to explain his absence on his marriage night, and, like
a sudden flame first seen upon a burning ship, lighting up the wide
ocean with its bright terrors, Vesta saw the infinite relation