The Entailed Hat | Page 5

at the principal
man's advent, and merely said, without nodding:
"'Morning!"
Judge Custis never flinched from anybody, but his intelligence
recognized in Meshach's eyes a kind of nature he had not yet met,
though he was of universal acquaintance. It was not hostility, nor
welcome, nor indifference. It was not exactly spirit. As nearly as the
Judge could formulate it, the expression was habitual self-reliance, and
if not habitual suspicion, the feeling most near it, which comes from
conscious unpopularity.
"Mr. Milburn," said Judge Custis, "when you are at leisure let me have
a few words with you."
The storekeeper turned to the poor folks in his little area and remarked
to them bluntly:
"You can come back in ten minutes."
They all went out without further command. Milburn closed the door.
The Judge moved a chair and sat down.
"Milburn," he said, dropping the formal "mister," "they tell me you
lend money, and that you charge well for it. I am a borrower sometimes,
and I believe in keeping interest at home in our own community. Will
you discount my note at legal interest?"
"Never," replied Meshach.

"Then," said the Judge, smiling, "you'll put me to some inconvenience."
"That's more than legal interest," answered Milburn, sturdily. "You'll
pay the legal interest where you go, and the inconvenience of going
will cost something too. If you add your expenses as liberally as you
incur them when you go to Baltimore, to legal interest, you are always
paying a good shave."
"Where you have risks," suggested the Judge, "there is some reason for
a heavy discount, but my property will enrich this county and all the
land you hold mortgages on."
"Bog ore!" muttered the money-lender. "I never lent money on that
kind of risk. I must read upon it! They say manufacturing requires
mechanical talent. How much do you want?"
"Three thousand."
"Secured upon the furnace?"
"Yes."
Meshach computed on a piece of paper, and the Judge, with easy
curiosity, studied his singular face and figure.
He was rather short and chunky, not weighing more than one hundred
and thirty pounds, with long, fine fingers of such tracery and separate
action that every finger seemed to have a mind and function of its own.
Looking at his hands only, one would have said: "There is here a
pianist, a penman, a woman of definite skill, or a man of peculiar
delicacy." 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. But the Judge was a politician,
with an adaptable mind and address.
"Speaking of social things, Milburn," he said, carelessly, "our town is
not so large that we don't all see each other sometimes. Why do you
wear that forlorn, unsightly hat?"
"Why do you wear the name Custis?"
"Oh, I inherited that!"

"And I inherited my hat."
There was a pause for a minute, but before the Judge could tell whether
it was an angry or an awkward pause, the storekeeper said:
"Judge Custis, I concede that you are the best bred man in Princess
Anne. Where did you get authority to question another person about
any decent article of