“Your daughter, madam,” replied Noah, quietly enough, “lies in no peril, although by the law there be punishments for ones who thus misuse the post. But there remains another question. You have put a lie against that lady of the letter into the mouth of our reverend friend. He has retold it to many; this morning he told it to the President. The tale proves itself untrue upon its face, and that is the one merit of it. It was a dangerous falsehood to tell, and”--here Noah looked towards the unhappy Reverend Campbell, who, as though fascinated by the other's baleful eye, lifted up his visage,' with its ugly array of munching mouth and flabby unhealthfulness--“and a still more dangerous falsehood to repeat.” “What do you require of us, gentlemen?” asked the frightened mother-harpy. “Nothing, save tongues of peace,” cried Noah. “It is too much to suppose that her friends will rest quiet while you foully tear a good woman to shreds. Tie up your tongues, you three, and the thing rests. Let another word escape, and a torch shall be found to burn you out like any other nest of adders.” The Reverend Campbell made no return to this warning thrown to him with the others. The scoundrel had the wisdom of silence when words would work no benefit. Still, I could trace a hunger for retaliation writhing beneath the coarse snake's skin of him. “I think we have locked three evil mouths to-day,” observed Noah, as we were about our return. “It is the less important, perhaps, since already a whole flock of these lies has been uncaged in the town.” “It is never unimportant,” I returned, “to identify an enemy. I am the more relieved, too, since you cleared up the mystery of that written menace. And yet I do not make out how you supposed it gained emanation among these people.” “I had no such thought in the beginning,” replied Noah. “I knew, as did you, and with a glance, how our entertainers were nothing fine nor deep, but of a harshest clay and of least intelligence. No more delicacy was required than might do for driving pigs. At first I sought to develop their whereabouts, and stormed the woods with my remarks. In that, and on the sheer chance of it, I employed the name of Timberlake. The daughter's disturbed features were a cue. And you know the rest. The digging up of the authorship of the letter was but the birth of a bold guess. However, we've paralyzed that trio of tongues, which is excellent as far as it goes. And we must beat out these fires wherever we find them. Else they will spread, and may come to mean a conflagration that shall burn some one to a cinder.” “And going back for cause,” I said, my thought recurring to Peg, “I still can not tell the hound purpose of this incessant, malignant pursuit of our little girl.”