nd
peacefully it looked at him--so undisturbed, while he was palpitating.

"Why this pain?" thought Milburn. "Am I afraid? That house is mine. Do I
fear to enter my own? And yet it does not fear me. It has been there so
long that it has no fears, and every window in it faces benignant to my
coming. The three gables survey yonder forest landscape like three old
magistrates on the bench, administering justice to a county where never
till now was there a ravisher!"

The thought produced a moment's intellectual pride in him, like lawless
power's uneasy paroxysm. "It is the Forest these gentles have to fear
to-day!" he thought, resentfully, then stopped, with another image his
word aroused:

"What has that forest ever felt of injury or hate, with every cabin-door
unlatched, no robber feared by any there, the blossoms on the negro's
peachtree, the ripe persimmons on the roadside, plenteous to every
forester's child, and humility and affection making all richer, without
a dollar in the world, than I, the richest upstart of the forest,
compelled to buy affection, like an indifferent slave!"

A large dog at Custis's home, seeing him walk so slowly, came down the
path to the gate, also walking slow, and showed neither animosity nor
interest, except mechanically to walk behind him towards the door.

"The dog knows me," thought the quickened heart of Meshach, "from
life-long seeing of me, but never wagged his tail at me in all that
time. Could I acquire the heart even of this dog, though I might buy
him? My debtor's step would still be most welcome to him, and he would
eat my food in strangeness and fear."

Milburn walked up the steps, and sounded the substantial brass knocker.
It struck four times, loud and deep, and the stillness that followed was
louder yet, like the unknown thing, after sentence has been passed. He
seemed to be there a very long time with his heart quite vacant, as if
the debtor's knocker had scared every chatterer out of it, and yet his
temples and ears were ringing. He was thinking of sounding the knocker
again, when a lady's servant, partly white, rolled back the bolt, and
bowed to his question whether the Judge was in.

He entered the broad hall of that distinguished residence, and taking
the Entailed Hat from his head, hung it up at last, where better
head-coverings had been wont to keep equal society, on a carved mahogany
rack of colonial times. The venerable object, once there, gave a common
look