atical brim. He looked it over
long and hard.

"Vanity, vanity!" he murmured, "vanity and habit! I dare not disown thee
now, because they give thee ridicule, and without thee they would give
me nothing but hate!"

The people around the tavern and court-house saw, with surprise too
great for jeering, the note-shaver go past in a carriage, driven by his
negro, and with two horses! Jack Wonnell took off his shining beaver to
cheer. As the phenomenal team receded, the old cry ran, however, down
the stilly street: "Steeple-top! He's got it on! Meshach's loose!"

The carriage proceeded out the forest road, and soon entered upon the
sandy, pine-slashed region called Hard-scrabble, or Hardship.

Here the roads were sandy as the hummocks and hills in the rear of a sea
beach, and the low, lean pines covered the swells and ridges, while in
occasional level basins, where the stiff clay was exposed, some
forester's unpainted hut sat black and smoking on the slope, without a
window-pane, an ornament, or anything to relieve life from its monotony
and isolation.

But where the rills ran off to the continuous swamps the leafage started
up in splendrous versatility. The maple stood revealed in all its fair,
light harmonies. The magnolia drooped its ivory tassels, and scented the
forest with perfume. The kalmia and the alder gave undergrowth and
brilliancy to the foliage. Hoary and green with precipitate old age, the
cypress-trees stood in moisture, and drooped their venerable beards from
angular branches, the bald cypress overhanging its evergreen kinsman,
and looking down upon the swamp-woods in autumn, like some hermit artist
on the rich pigments on his palette.

But nothing looked so noble as the sweet gum, which rose like a giant
plume of yellow and orange, a chief in joyous finery, where the cypress
was only a faded philosopher.

Beside such a tall gum-tree Samson Hat reined in, where a well-spring
shone at the bottom of a hollow cypress. He borrowed a bucket from the
hut across the road, and watered the horses.

"Marster," ventured the negro, "dey say your gran'daddy sot dis spring."

"Yes," said Milburn, "and built the cabin. Yonder he lies, on the knoll
by that stump, up in the field: he and more of our wasted race."

"And yon woman is a Milburn," added the negro, socially. "I know her by
de hands."

The barefoot woman living in the cabin--one room and a loft, and the
floor but a few inches above the ground--cried ou