ling opportunity have slowly recovered
independence. Now he shall take my place in the forest, or I will wear
my hat at the head of his family table.'"

"A dreadful revenge!" whispered Custis, with a shudder. "Such a hat is
worse than a cloven foot. In God's name! whence came that ominous hat?"

Milburn took up the hat and held it before the lamplight, so that its
shadow stood gigantic against the wall.

"Who would think," he said, sarcastically, "that a mere head-covering,
elegant in its day, could make more hostility than an idle head? I will
tell you the silly secret of it. When I came from the obscurity of the
forest, sensitive, and anxious to make my way, and slowly gathered
capital and knowledge, a person in New York directed a letter of inquiry
to me. It told how a certain Milburn, a Puritan or English Commonwealth
man, had risen to great distinction in that province, and had
revolutionized its government and suffered the penalty of high-treason."

"True enough," said Judge Custis, pouring a second glass of brandy;
"Milburn and Leisler were executed in New York during the lifetime of
the first Custis. They anticipated the expulsion of James II., and were
entrapped by their provincial enemies and made political martyrs."

"The inquirer," said Meshach, "who had obtained my address in the course
of business, related, that after Milburn's death his brethren and their
families had sailed to the Chesapeake, where the Protestants had
successfully revolutionized for King William, and, making choice of poor
lands, they had become obscure. He asked me if the court-house records
made any registry of their wills."

"Of course you found them?"

"Yes. It was a revelation to me, and gave me the honorable sense of some
origin and quality. I traced myself back to the earliest folios, at the
close of the seventeenth century."

"Any property, Milburn?" asked the Judge, voluptuous and reanimated
again.

"My great-grandfather had left his son nothing but a Hat."

"Not uncommon!" exclaimed Judge Custis. "Our early wills contain little
but legacies of wearing apparel, household articles, bedding, pots and
kettles, and the elements of civilization."

"The will on record said: '_I give to my eldest son, Meshach Milburn, my
best Hat, and no more of my estate._'"

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the Judge, loudly. "Genteel to the last! A hat of
fashion, no doubt, made in London; quite too ceremonious and topgallant
for these colonies.