With rising color, she put the hat in the leather hat-box, and shut it up.
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."
"He must be doctored at once, papa."
"Well, I am good enough doctor for the bilious fever. He wants plenty of cold lemonade, cold sponging, and ice to suck when the fever is on him. When the chills intervene he wants blanketing, hot bottles at his feet, and hot tea, or something stronger. In the rest between the attacks of fever and chill, he wants calomel and Peruvian bark, and if these delirious spells go on, he may want both bleeding and opium."
"Here are some of the things he immediately needs, then," Vesta said, as a tall white man she had never seen before came up the stairs with Virgie, bringing some Susquehanna ice in a blanket, and a roll of carpet, and other articles she had sent for. The man's face wore a large bruise that heightened his savage appearance.
"Judge," exclaimed the stranger, "I'm doin' a little work to pay fur my board. Who's your whiffler? He'll know me when he sees me next time."
Following the stranger's eyes, Vesta and her father saw Meshach Milburn, half raised up from the low trundle-bed, staring at Joe Johnson as if trying to get at him. His lips moved, he partly articulated: