been seen since he entered Johnson's tavern. His will
was found there, and your daughter gets her mother's property and
servants back."

"I must finish my story," Judge Custis said, stanching his tears. "By
the decline of every family with natural feelings and refinement, under
what Mr. Pinkney termed 'the contaminating curse of reluctant bondsmen,'
we, also, became poor. To save others, it was necessary that I must
marry, and get money by my own prostitution. My God, how we are repaid!
A bride was found for me in Baltimore, the sister of Allan McLane, and a
beauty.

"I began my married life with the best intentions; my poor mistress
herself advised me to turn to my wife, and become a true man. She told
me so with her heart breaking. In heaven, where she dwells with my poor
child, she hears me now, and knows I speak the truth!"

Judge Custis broke down again, and leaned his convulsed head on
Clayton's tender breast, whose own widower's grief gushed forth
responsively.

"Children were born in Teackle Hall; my servitude was becoming adjusted
to me, when Allan McLane, in his love of vindictiveness and of low,
formal respectability, conceived that my poor quadroon required some
chastisement for having been his sister's rival, and he set a trap to
buy her. I was forced to have her bought, to protect her, and to bring
her to my care again, and thus our passion was revived, and, giving
birth to Virgie, she died. Reared together, and unconscious of their
kindred, those daughters loved each other as dearly as when, in heaven,
they shall hide in the radiance of each other, and cover my sins with
their angelic wings."

"Rise up, old friend!" cried Clayton; "your transgressions are, at
least, washed out in sincere tears. Hear the birds all around us loving
and condoning, and filling the air with praise. Come out!"

As they stepped upon Georgetown Square they saw John Randel, Jr.,
leading a party of surveyors to locate the opposition railroad to
Meshach Milburn's. These and many others were pressing towards the
whipping-post and pillory, in the rear of the court-house, where stood,
exposed by the sheriff, the cleanly mulatto woman who had entertained
Virgie in Snow Hill the first night of her flight.

"This free woman, Priscilla Hudson," cried the sheriff, "is to stand one
hour in the pillory for the crime of lending her pass to a slave. Thirty
lashes she was sentenced to, the Governor has graciously taken off. She
is to be