As though in a dream I took Peg in under my great cloak, and having my arm about her would now hold her close and warm to my side. Her ear was over my heart as her face lay pressed against me, and I only hope she could understand the story of that throbbing.

For myself I was in a mid-swirl of mere confusion, with my wits all upside down, and no clear notion of what I did or why. The General's word of that Florida business, the cabinet to break and Peg to go away from me, made it for the moment as though the floor of the world had given way beneath my feet. It would provoke chaos and seem the end of things.

It was never said of me, even by the least informed, that I would be swayed in any kind or made to pause in what I went about by the counsel of conventionality. I had lived a life half-bitted, and for the main with bridle on my neck; the last I cared for were the frowns or the smiles of folk. If it were a woman to talk against the teeth of my fancy, I would turn my back on her; if a man, I had a way to gag his tongue if it should be no better than the butt of my pistol. And yet, however loose my habit or dull my knowledge of those matters, I did not go without a fashion of cold shock on Peg's behalf when I was so far my own man again as to dwell on our position—we, plodding through the snow and the darkness, locked in that carriage.

This mood of apprehension was so much in the upper-hand with me that it came to be the impulse, and would suggest the topic I laid tongue to when first I found my words. It was not without a mighty effort of the will that I obliged myself to some steadiness of utterance. Then, and not very craftily, I might observe, I, in the manner of one who thinks aloud, and surely as much to myself as to Peg, gave vent to an exclamation under my breath. Indeed, I would not have looked for Peg to hear me, since her head—pretty ears and all—was buried beneath the thick folds of my cloak.

“What if folk were to know!” I said.

Then came Peg's voice like a half stifled murmur of despair.

“What should I care who knows?” cried she. “It is my heart's funeral! My heart is dead and we go upon its funeral in this snow!”

At that, without well heeding what I was about, and doubtless drawn to it by the note of woe in Peg's tones, I held her to my side even more closely than before. Thus we remained for a long space in utter silence, neither speaking a word, while the quiet storm stole down upon us and the slow wheels forced their passage through the white cold levels of the snow.

After a bit, Peg's head, curls in a tangle and hood removed, was thrust outside my cloak, which garment, however, she would continue to wrap about her and hold with her hand.

“I would still be near to you,” she said, as though in explanation of the cloak, “though I am no longer cold.”

The mere truth was, the night, while a choke and smother of snow, was nothing chill, being bare freezing for a temperature and never a breath of air to stir, and the inside of the big carriage as warm as many a library. And yet, when I would first get in, I found Peg shivering as with an ague. That was gone now and she more in control.

Peg would now be more mistress of herself and speak with a measure of firmness.

“You have heard?” she asked.

“The General,” I returned, “has told me you are to go to Florida. But how should you have been told? Or was it known to you for long?”

This latter I put a little viciously, for it struck me on the moment how Peg might have been aware of this new destiny for days, and hidden it from me. But no; she had come to her information but an hour before. Even while the General with his hand on my rebellious shoulder gave me the story of it, the letter which told the news to Peg was put within her hands.

“It was to have been a secret,” said she, “and my husband would have kept it until his return. But he will be detained beyond his plans; he wrote me because of preparations I must make.”

While Peg said this, her face was held up towards mine, and even in the vague lights, which were rather the ghosts of lights than any radiance however dim, I could catch some whiteness of it.

Suddenly her head was in its old resting place over my heart, with the cloak to again become its cover.

“Watch-dog,” whispered Peg, and I might tell how deeply she was stricken by the quaver of her voice, as much as by a trembling that swept her as a gust rumples the surface of a tarn; “watch-dog, I felt that I would not live unless I saw you. Do you contemn me? Do you own shame for your little friend? I could not help it; I sent for Rivera, and made him fetch this carriage. We are alone—hidden from the world's eyes. I have torn a night from the hands of Time to be no one's night save ours. I waited by the lamp; my soul called to you and I knew you would come. I would not send; I was sure you would be with me without that. I should have died if I had not found you. Say that I did right, watch-dog. Say that it was right! I only cry for your one word; what others will think or say I care not, but I could not bear up against your anger! Say that I did right; say it!—say that you are glad.”

“I will say it all and intend it all, my little one!” Here I stroked Peg's tangle of curls as one would pet a child.

My whole being was wrapped in a storm and my bosom caged a whirlwind. I could be calm enough, apparently, and yet I was growing aware of that tempest of spirit which shook me like an aspen. I had been dull—dull to the point of crime; but now my wisdom would begin to sharpen and brighten itself.

Still, I had so much coolness to call my own that I was glad of the fact of Rivera. I remember thinking on that; for, with no more words than the dumb, he was as secret as a mole and as honest, withal, and single-hearted as a hound. There would be none to know; as Peg said, she had torn a night from eternity to be ours and ours alone.

While these thoughts went tumbling down the steeps of my conjecturings, I continued mechanically to caress Peg's hair, and it felt like a web of gossamer in my coarse fingers.

“Contemn you, child!” said I, and my voice was not much louder than had been hers, and I bent down my head so that she might hear; “contemn you! I would as soon impeach the snow outside, new given from the sky, denouncing it for soot.”

Peg began to weep, and I could hear the sharp catching of her sobs. Suddenly the moan came sighing up to me:

“Oh, if there were no such word as right or justice or duty, but only love—just love!” Then with a quick backward twist of her form that was like an impulse, and as replete of a swift grace as any suppleness of that long ago leopard whereof she would so often make me think, Peg turned herself in my arms, and with her own encircling my neck lay crying on my bosom. I held her close—closer. I could tell the beating of her heart, count the footfalls of her nature as though she were parcel of myself. How I loved her! adored her!—my prone spirit would fall on its knees to her for its Deity.

The while, too, and with my soul at these prayers, my candor would arrest me for the traitor I was. Where should be that conscience the General spoke on? Or where that honor which was to have been as a sentry to check my strayings? That honor was recreant where love would take the field against it; that conscience was so much apostate of the right it would frame an argument of equity and claim superior liberty for superior love, and be all for carrying Peg away. My boasted manhood was a rope of sand!

Even now, as weary-white with years I tell this tale of dead and other days, I yet wonder upon that discovery of myself. This was what I beheld: I had loved Peg from the start; the General's jest was sober truth. I would worship her, and then cheat myself with lie and sophistry to hide my villainy against my own detection. And now when the mask was fallen and I stood face to face with the true image of my infamy, would I still press forward to my sins? Or would I think on the good General, and the pain and the foul stain for each of us which I was about to compass?

It was this to run in my mind, but all in a dimmest way to be imagined, and as though it were a dream and nothing true. As bonds to stay me, these thoughts came to be no more than packthreads; as props to uphold me, trembling to a fall, they proved the merest, reeds to lean on. With Peg cradled in my arms, her heart beating on my own, she filled out the world for me and thrust all else beyond the frontier of my outmost hope or fear. I wanted only Peg, would heed no other call, and whether it were right or wrong or black or white I cared not. Caught fast in the mills, I was wholly ground between Peg and my mighty love for her. In a supreme egotism and the selfishness that goes wanting heart or conscience, I would set torch to the skies before I gave her up.

It is the fair wellhead of amazement how a man is thus strange to himself; how he will defeat his own best prophecy and be as opposite as night and day to all he promised. Folk have never accounted me weak, and I myself would have said I was a man of stone. I have been described for one of resolution. I have spurred my horse across the front of beaten troops, terror-whipped and in retreat. I've ridden against them, and with word and point of sword forced them to a halt. I've wheeled them, and, since they would not go without, driven them back like sheep; and then, when they would be of a braver hope, taken their lead and whirled them like lions upon the foe they lately fled from, and won a battle with them. And now I, who was granite in the face of men, had only a will of water for this girl who wept across my heart.

“Take me away!” she cried; “oh, take me away!”

Then it was my love swept down upon her like a strong wind. I take shame to repeat what I said. Bluntly I would disregard all claims, forfeit honor, forget the General and defy the rest; we would wander to new regions, she and I, and set up our idol of blind love. Carried by my soul's wish, I would leave her nothing untold; I would bow down at her feet and beg of her to come with me.

As I spoke, Peg would seem to turn more calm and comforted. She did not withdraw from my arms, but rested in them like a child. And yet there arose a sad steadfastness to wrap her about that was a check and a bar to me.

“Watch-dog,” said Peg at last, and her manner was the manner of one who grieves, “watch-dog, I am a wicked woman. I live my life backward, and it would be as though I could not help or save myself. My feet take hold on baseness, and my hands spin evil for those who do me good. My touch is a darkness—a palsy—a death. Oh, why was I born!” Peg wailed; “why was I sent to destroy the ones I love!”

Not a word would now come to me. I was silenced and sat like one convicted, waiting sentence. But that cold thought still crept about my heart like a snake. I would—I must have Peg; I would give my share in God to make her mine!

“What should be the wrong in me?” Peg went on. “Knowing the right from the left, I take ever the left hand turning; seeing good and evil, I choose the bad, and there rises a black glory in my heart like a cloud of pleasant sin to swallow up repentance. Oh, if I might only tame myself to an appearance of right and be a hypocrite when I may not be a saint!”

Peg was presently better restored to herself. In the very moment when the gates of my soul would open to let it forth to her and I gave myself into her hands to be fashioned by her as she would, Peg began to gather steadiness. It was she to now think and speak and decide for both of us; for myself, I was clean swept away. I was not to know this new strength of Peg's from her tones alone, or the trend of what she uttered; I could feel her heart-throbs become firmer and more slow as she lay in my arms, and it was in them I read the truth of her resolve.

“Watch-dog,” said Peg in a way most sweetly solemn, “I think nothing of myself. If it were I alone to be unmade, I'd never leave your arms again. Come weal, come woe, here would I bide, and while your arms were round me the worst would change to be the best. But I will not see you under the mire of men's tongues. Dear one, you would die! You are one whose life grows on his honor like a flower on its stem; disgrace would cut you down and you would die. And yet, I am glad I love you; I am glad I care nothing for myself. Let my fate be woven to me coarse as sackcloth, harsh as nettles, yet will I exult while I draw its folds about me. I will go on as a world would say I should; and if the way of life lie steep, I'll still climb on and think I toil for you; and if it be stony and if it bruise my feet, I'll say I suffer that to keep you safe; I'll make my grief my Eden and find in the endless woe of your surrender a nobler, higher, more immortal transport than would have owned me in your arms. And there will be another world!” Peg's tones swung low to my ear, and mystical. “Watch-dog, there he lives after this.”

Peg was silent for a space, and would turn even and cool and in a way of content. I, on my part, might neither say her yea nor nay, for I was in the hollow of her hand like a pebble to be retained or cast by her into the sea as she should conclude.

And somehow I was no longer in the dark. I loved her; and yet I knew Peg was not to be for me; she had said the word; she would go and I would stay; for all her soft beauty and that love for me which spoke in every fiber of her being, the truth flowed in on me like a tide that in no way might I change her or shape her or move her from her will. Against my prayer and in the front of protest, I would be saved to myself and I would lose her; she would do it all. What was it the General said? He would save Peg from Peg? It was she who now would save me from both herself and me when my love-sown madness was hot to make a wreck of all.

“Yes, watch-dog,” Peg continued dreamily, “there will come another life.” Then of the suddenest twining her arms about my neck more tightly still and until she clung there like a part of me, she cried out as though her soul spoke: “Kiss me, sweetheart; kiss me, if it be but once. This night at least is ours.”

It was she who would command. I grew drunken on her lips while my thoughts would stray and stagger. I could know nothing, act nothing, be nothing save as she would have me. Her hot arms were as the arms of summer torrents to hurry me along; her lips were like the lips of a whirlpool! It was a kiss—a kiss of the infinite—and would lay its velvet touch upon the ultimate reason of existence.

And so Peg went away; and for my portion I took up my old life, which now was as dark and chill and hollow as a cave.

Now what should there be more to tell? What matters it how secession hid its head? or how Calhoun resigned his Vice-Presidency to later creep back to a seat in that Senate where he had sat on high and ruled? or how the General fought and slew the Bank? Who is there to care for the story of the General's re-election, when Van Buren came with him for the second place? Who, I say, would bend the ear of interest to such tales as those when now our Peg was gone?

The General never again took up with me that matter of his Cabinet and its dissolution, and how he scattered it to save Peg from herself. One evening, however, as he smoked and I sat bitter and listless, I plumped a question at him.

“If it were to save Peg from Peg,” said I, “why did you defer so long? Why did not you disperse your Cabinet months before? Or was it that you failed to note Peg's peril of herself till just before you acted?” This last with a great sneer.

“It was plain to me from the beginning how Peg was won to you,” said he.

“Then, in the beginning why did not you act?”

“How could I? Peg was under fire for her fair repute. Had I broken up my Cabinet, it would have been Peg's death blow. Folk would have told how it was for the war upon her and because she could not be defended. No, I must give her time for triumph; that achieved, the rest might happen and she be made secure in Florida. It was the one trail, and I followed it.” The General came over to my chair. “Old comrade,” said he with a world of goodness in his manner, “if I have thrust a thorn in your heart, forgive me. If friendship can cure, that thorn will be plucked away.”

On another day the General was in a temper for abstract philosophies. It lay in a hot time of summer and his moods flowed lazily. His fancy would run away to the topic of woman and her helplessness.

“Beautiful and sweet, she is,” he was saying, “and a blessing, too; but the man must ever bear upon his mind her weakness, and be her buckler even from herself. He must be on guard for both. For she is as a child, and nowise deep nor fortified of any rooted strength. Your man, on the other hand, while wanting those traits of beauty which shine forth in woman like the stars at night, is withal safe enough. He is cold like an iceberg, and like an iceberg he rides steadily throughout every gale with nine-tenths of him beneath the sea. Your tempest can go no deeper than the surface; it cannot search the ocean's depths, and so the man swims safely.”

Where the General would have brought up in these tongue-wanderings one may only guess. He was never to finish, for in a flurry of irritation I interrupted him.

“Now let me tell you one thing,” said I, wheeling on him with a sort of venom; “to my mind, your man is a dullish fool of neither bones nor brains, and your woman has nothing to fear from him.”

“What's that?” cried the General, startled into letting fall his pipe; “what do I hear you say?”

“And more,” I went on; “your man will do whatever your woman commands. He will go or stay, or fetch or carry, or weep or laugh, or live or die by the least breath of her lips. Your man is mere clay; your woman is the potter to mould him and bake him and break him in form and fashion and fragment as shall best flatter her caprice or most nicely match the color of her fancy. For virtue, your man is a toad and your woman that blossom by which he crouches. For power, your woman is the wind, while your man is that poor scrap of nothing to be tossed thereon.”

“You are a cynic,” retorted the General with a snort, and after surveying me for a moment with a warlike eye he sauntered away for another pipe.

“Your woman must save herself,” cried I, as he went through the door. “At all events, if she have nothing stronger than your man to lean on, her case is lost and desolate indeed.”

“You-all is plumb kerrect, Marse Major,” said Jim, who as usual had been listening with flattering interest while the General and I discussed; “you-all is plumb right. Man an' woman is jes' like a candle; he's d'taller, she's d'wick. D'Marse General is a pow'ful fine soger an' all that, but he shore don't know enough 'bout women folks to wad a gun.”

One day I got a little note from Peg. It was as though I held a sunbeam in my fingers; I kissed it while my heart put up a prayer. Thus it ran:

“So, Watch-dog:—They have taken me and left you, and there be miles between. Wherefore I feel very safe and very sad. It is all birds and blossoms and trees and sunshine and bright days and sorrow here. I came away in such a tumult of hurry I left many things behind. Most of them I can do without, but I mislaid my love, and that grows to be a sore distress. Here where I should need it I'm without it; there, where mayhap it lies unregarded and uncared for, it can give me no good but only pain. You may find it—my poor love!—since it should be something close to you. It may be lying at your feet while you read this. Should you come across it, even though you be in the art and press of president making, don't forget to lift it up and save it and keep it warm upon your heart for sake of little Peg. But I must cure me of this abject strain; I too much beg where I should give commands. For are you not my slave? Look if the small white mark of vassalage be not upon your hand! Do you find it? Yes? Read it, then, and re-read it with your heart! Do you know the promise it would tell you? By the sign of that white mark my tooth made, it is given that now or then, or here or there, or in this life or in that, your Peg will yet lay hands of love upon her slave.”

That was the last letter as it was the first—the last word from my lost and vanished Peg. I have that letter by me as I write; it is yellow and worn and stained and blistered as though with tears. That was my last word from her, I say. And now when the winter of my days lies thick and white and cold upon me, and those whom I loved are gone, while those to come and go before me are strangers whose very names are strange, I wend often to Peg's grave. There where the great stone fits down above her, and resting myself upon that stone—there, by the door of death, I muse upon the past. I kiss the stone above Peg—cold it is, cold as my age-chilled lips! And I think on the time that was, with its hot lights to dazzle and blind and make drunk the heart with the red splendors of them; and on the time that will be—a shadow-land of unformed wonders! Then will my old eyes come to search among the wrinkles for that small white mark on my hand which Peg's loving leopard teeth ordained, and I feel again that snowstorm kiss, while my hope, for a prayer, recites Peg's bond to yet lay hands of love upon her slave.

THE END.