“Ah, the poor people! His awful goodness, I suppose, drove them to frenzy.” Peg's voice was mocking sympathy. Then, with a great abruptness of anger, and throwing away my arm: “Do you know what I think of your precious Drusus? I think he was a hypocrite, and a canting prig who earned his fate; and if he have followers they should taste the same destiny for a sniveling conceit that teaches them a holiness above their neighbors.” This Peg flung at me like a spoiled child; and then, stepping smartly, she went on alone, I following in silence a yard or more to the rear. CHAPTER IX--THE GENERAL SELECTS HIS SUCCESSOR. Now fell across us the sultry summer; sometimes with rain, and steamy mud to follow; and then with stretches of a burning dryness when the dust curled aloft on the impertinent lip of the wind to fill folk's eyes and faces. There came, too, the shadow of impending calamity to rest upon us, for the General's health began to flag, and it would look for a while as though he had been marked by death itself. The malady was never understood by me, and I think the doctor lived no better off; but, as near as one might guess, it arose from the bogs and reeking marshes fringing the river on our south, and on which, morning and evening, I've seen the damps and miasmas lying white and thick as a flock of wool--a sight to shake the strongest. The General was indeed ill, and with face turning to be wan while his haggard eye grew ever more bright and hollow. He lost greatly the use of his legs; those members being swollen to a preposterous size, and his feet dropsical, so that he could not be said to walk but only hobble. He must be supported, leaning commonly on my arm, though sometimes Peg's pretty shoulder was his crutch; for she was with him very constant, reading to him, or passing him a glass, or cheering him with her talk of flippant nothings. With his usual bitterness of resolution the General would each day be up and dressed, and pass the hours on a lounge which Augustus prepared, and where he might lie and through the open casement command a prospect of the distant Arlington hills. To such a lowness did the General sink that his death was waited for, and the doctor who attended him--and did no good--felt driven to give him the name of it. “For one who is in so high a place,” said the doctor, “must needs have weighty concerns to be put in order; and therefore of all folk he should be shown his end in time.” This was gospel true enough as an abstraction, but in the case of the General that doctor should have known how his business was to cure, and not stand prating of death. Of this I informed him in such wise that he was at once for leaving the house and never coming back. The loss might have been easily measured had he done so. It was the General himself who told me he was to die; and it stood a marvel, the good patience and sympathy wherewith he went upon the information. One would have supposed it was of my death he talked.