He told a singular tale, tracing his hat to Raleigh's times and through
Sir Henry Vane to America, till it became the property of Jacob
Milborne, the popular martyr who was executed in New York, and his
brethren driven into Maryland, bringing with them the harmless hat as
their only patrimony.[1]
Before he began, Milburn drew up his compact little figure and opened
the door to the hall. The wind or air from some of the large, cold
apartments of the long house, coming in by some crack or open sash, gave
almost a shriek, and scattered the fire in the chimney.
Vesta felt her blood chill a moment as her visitor re-entered with the
antediluvian hat, and placed it upon the table beneath the lamp.
It had that look of gentility victorious over decay, which suggested the
mummy of some Pharaoh, brought into a drawing-room on a learned
society's night. Vesta repressed a smile, rising through her pain, at
the gravity of the forester guest, who was about to demonstrate his
aristocracy through this old hat. It seemed to her, also, that the
portraits of the Custises, on the wall, carried indignant noses in the
air at their apparently conscious knowledge of the presence of some
unburied pretender, as if, in Westminster Abbey, the effigies of the
Norman kings had slightly aroused to feel Oliver Cromwell lying among
them in state.
The hat, Vesta perceived, was Flemish, such as was popular in England
while the Netherlands was her ally against the house of Spain, and,
stripped of its ornaments, was lengthened into the hat of the Puritans.
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