“Why, you flounder in abyssmal ignorance of yourself. To study another with a hope of light, one should first own some liberal knowledge of one's self. To have gone about to teach you that difficult lesson of Peg, you, who are as unaware of yourself as any bush or tree or tuft of grass, would have been as truly wise, and a task well worth one's while, as would be a discussion of Moore with that savage of the woods who has yet to hear of the alphabet. However, we will rest content with you as you are, oh, watch-dog! oh, slave of Peg, wearing her mark! The more, for that your splendid ignorance of both yourself and me has to be its characteristic, a white, high beauty like unto some snow-capped peak--safe, too, since inaccessible. And now, because I have stayed long; and because we are good friends again; and because we will infallibly quarrel should I remain, I think, watch-dog, I shall go home.” And so Peg went away, singing a little song which was no song but like the whistle of some thrush, leaving me in a calm of peace; nor did I fail to remember how Peg's tune, when she departed, was the earliest music upon her lips since ever she would be in anger with me for those ill opinions against Eaton. There was no long time given me to think on Peg and her whims of temper, black and white, for Noah was with me briskly on the tail of her going away. Noah brought with him that Blair who had come in deference to my note, to be the rival of Duff Green and organize the _Globe_ as a death-stab to Duff's _Telegraph_. I had met Blair before, and liked him; most of all was he a favorite of the General, for his pen was fed of fire and the heart of his friendship was like the loyal heart of a dog. In person, Blair was a slender, sickly man, but with a great head on his shoulders, and strange feverish eyes that shone like jewels. He was not unlike the General; only the latter stood vastly taller, and, while Blair was as some fire to blaze and sparkle and burn, the General would be more that hurricane of wind, bridled of no man, sweeping flat as a field of turnips everything to stand in the way. “Here is a delicate question,” said Noah, with his grin of the cynic. “The department folk will give our friend, Blair, no public printing; it goes all to Duff. That should be stopped, since your public advertising--I speak from my place as an editor--is for your newspaper as the breath in its body.” “And what would you propose by way of cure for that felon perversity of our folk of the departments who will still send printing to the recreant Duff?” This I put laughingly, to be abreast of the lightness of Noah. “Surely,” said Blair, speaking with a kind of eagerness natural to him, and which ran red-hot throughout all he did; “surely, the president must make no personal interference. Were he to order printing out of one paper and into another, the opposite side would use it for a club against him to the last day of his career.”