My life has been hard but pure."
The old Judge felt the last unconscious reflection.
"Yes," he uttered, solemnly, "no doubt Heaven marked me for some such
degradation as this, when I yielded to low propensities, and sought my
pleasure and companions in the huts of the forest!"
"You claim descent from the Stuart Restoration: I know the tale. A
creditor of the two exiled royal brothers for sundry tavern loans and
tipples drew for his obligation an office in far-off Virginia. Seizures,
confiscations, the slave-trade, marriages--in short, the long game of
advantage--built up the fortunes of the Custises, until they expired in
a certain Judge, whose notes of hand a hard man, forest-born, held over
the Judge's head on what seemed hard conditions, but conditions in which
was every quality of mercy, except consideration for your pride."
The Judge made a laugh like a howl.
"_Mercy?_" he exclaimed, "you do not know what it is! To ensnare my
innocent daughter in the damned meshes of your principal and interest!
Call it malignity--the visitation of your unsocial wrath on man and an
angel; but not mercy!"
"Then we will call it compensation," continued Meshach Milburn: "for
twenty years I have denied myself everything; you denied yourself
nothing. Your substance is wasted; renew it from the abundance of my
thrift. It was not with an evil design that I made myself your creditor,
although, as the years have rolled onward and solitude chilled my heart,
that has always pined for human friendship, I could not but see the
kindling glory of your daughter's beauty.
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