Judge Custis made his way up the dark stairs in a little while, and, as
soon as he looked at Milburn, exclaimed,
"Curses come home to roost! It was only night before last that I said,
in the presence of Meshach's negro, 'May the ague strike him and the
bilious sweat from Nassawongo mill-pond!' He slept by it that night,
while I was tossing in misery. The next night it was his turn. Daughter,
he has the bilious intermittent fever, the legacy of all his fathers. He
exposed himself, I suppose, extraordinarily that night, and I hear that
he burned the old cabin in the morning. Now he will burn, in memory of
it, for the next ten weeks; for he has, I suspect, from the time of day
the burning and delirium came, what is called the double quotidian type
of the fever, with two attacks in the twenty-four hours."
"Poor man!" exclaimed Vesta.
"Now I can account for his appearance at the marriage ceremony last
night. The fever was on him, but he went through it by hard grit, and,
probably, returning here to get some relief, he just fell over on that
bed, and his head left him for some hours. The paroxysm goes away during
sleep, and returns in the morning; so, before he could get abroad
to-day, even if he could walk, to report himself at Teackle Hall,
another fever came, and a furious one, too, and he will have good luck
to survive forty days of fever, with probably eighty sweats in that
time.
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