“Here in Washington,” returned Peg, her eyes full of wonder, as she scanned the face of the General in quest of a clue to his sharp, unusual curiosity. “He stayed here idle for four years before he last sailed. He was seeking to adjust his accounts as purser for the frigate _President_. His books were lost when the English captured the ship. It was that to make all the trouble; the red-tape of the navy office detained him here four years before it would accept his accounts. It was during that period we were wed.” Peg's voice, brisk at the start, fell sorrowfully away towards the end. “Then he was here in June two summers ago,” said the General, “and for three years prior and almost one year after that time?” “Yes,” said Peg. “Now there!” cried the General, with a mixture of wrath and disgust; “see what bald and easily confuted falsehood a fool moved of low malice will tell! I could believe at times, when I'm brought face to face with such mendacious simplicity, that liars are denied powers of reflection.” “What is it all about?” asked Peg. “Nothing, child, nothing,” returned the General. “Now run away home; I want a word with your big playmate here.” Then in a softer manner: “No, child, the Major and I are trying to do you a service, and please God! I think we shall accomplish it.” The whole kind attitude of the General towards Peg seemed ever that of a father, and he was used to call her to him or dismiss her with no shade of rudeness, truly, and yet with no more of ceremonies than an affectionate parent might adopt. Peg never grudged obedience, and received the General's word as readily, and was withal as free of affront at any suddenness, as should be a daughter who feels her place assured. When Peg was off for home, the General came and sat in the chair she had vacated. With the white thick brush of his end-wise hair, and the fierce eyes of him, he made a portrait wide apart from that tender one the great chair so lately framed. “You are not to know,” quoth the General, without halting for my question, “the whole foul story this creature has told me. It is bad enough that I was made to give ear to it. The point lies here: If Timberlake were with Peg in June two years ago, and for a year before, this miserable tale falls to the ground as false. He makes its main element to depend upon Timberlake's absence--his charge of iniquity against Peg holds only by that. The Reverend Serpent's hinge to swing his vilification on is the absence of Timberlake. And you heard her declare how Timberlake was here.” “Does this snake, as you rightly term him, give you his story as of a knowledge of his own?” “No; he hides behind the words of two women; a mother and daughter, named Craven. They pretend to base their slanders on what they allege was told them by the husband and father, a Doctor Craven--dead, he is, these ten months.”