" All the fingers were well produced, as if the hand instead of
the face was meant to be the mind's exponent and reveal its portrait
there.
Yet the face of Meshach Milburn, if more repellent, was uncommon.
The effects of one long diet and one climate, invariable, from
generation to generation, and both low and uninvigorating, had brought
to nearly aboriginal form and lines his cheek-bones, hair, and resinous
brown eyes. From the cheek-bones up he looked like an Indian, and
expressed a stolid power and swarthiness. Below, there dropped a large
face, in proportion, with nothing noticeable about it except the nose,
which was so straight, prominent, and complete, and its nostrils so
sensitive, that only the nose upon his face seemed to be good company
for his hands. When he confronted one, with his head thrown back a
little, his brown eyes staring inquiry, and his nose almost sentient,
the effect was that of a hostile savage just burst from the woods.
That was his condition indeed.
"Look at him in the eyes," said the town-bred, "he's all forester!"
"But look at his hand," added some few observant ones.
Ah! who had ever shaken that hand?
It was now extended to the Judge and he took from its womanly fingers
the terms of the loan. Judge Custis was surprised at the moderation of
Meshach, and he looked up cheerfully into that ever sentinel face on
which might have been printed "_qui vive?_"
"It's not the goodness of the security," said Meshach, "I make it low to
you, socially!"
The Custis pride started with a flush to the Judge's eyes, to have this
ostracised and hooted Shylock intimate that their relations could be
more than a prince's to a pawnbroker.
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