Prudently
estimating the sparseness of his fortune to execute a hundred miles of
embankment and railroad, Milburn yet kept up a display of surveyors and
graders in several counties, and his local patriotism had at least the
appreciation of Vesta's little circle.
In the meantime the continued absence of Samson surprised him, and Judge
Custis's letters were irregular and long coming as he went farther
north, while two letters received by the Widow Dennis were as mystical
as they were assuring: one, in a female hand, told her that her son
Levin was being tenderly watched, and another, in man's writing,
enclosed some money, and said her son would soon be home. Mrs. Dennis
was far from happy in this indefinite state of mind, and her heart told
her, also, that the absence of James Phoebus was a different strain.
She loved that absentee already too well to forgive his silence.
One day, before November, Vesta said to her husband:
"The air and sky are warm and sparkling yet, and the roses are out. You
work too hard between your canal case and your railroad. Let us fill the
two carriages and drive to old Rehoboth, and eat our dinner there."
He consented, and they took with them Grandmother Tilghman and William,
Rhoda Holland, Roxy, and Mrs. Dennis, and also the poor free woman,
Mary, whom Jimmy Phoebus had released from her chains.
The road passed in sight of the birthplace of the lion of independence
in Maryland, Samuel Chase, who forced that hesitating state, by
threatenings and even riots, to declare for permanent separation from
England, as Henry Winter Davis, by the same means, eighty-five years
afterwards, forced her rebels against the Union to show their hands.
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