“Truly, it is, my best dear friend.” Peg held up her pansy face, and offered me a cheerful look by way of proof. “Nor am I even a trifle provoked. For all that, I would not permit them because they found me with the good General, and with you”--she gave my arm a little pressure--“and doubtless would offer some request, to put on a false face, and so use me for their interest. I owe them no such tenderness. Besides, since I've found real friends,”--Peg crowded to my side more closely, and bent upon me her kind, unfathomed eyes, as though admitting my protection,--“since I've found real friends, I've no room in my heart for mocking imitations.” Peg laughed her witch-laugh now, and stepped on more quickly. “Don't let us talk of them,” she said, “don't let us talk of such hollow folk!” Peg's carriage stood at the curb. Indeed, she had but just arrived when, as I piloted the Reverend Campbell and the magpie, I found her by the General's fire. “Some day you must go with me to meet my mother,” said Peg; “I've promised her.” Then, as I lifted her into the carriage, “Mercy! you should practice for a lighter hand. I feel as one in the paws of a bear.” With a wave of her hand, she was off for the President's Square where her home stood; I, on my part, turned back to the General, walking slowly, and seeing Peg's gentle eyes before me all the way to his door. Sweet Peg! had it been I, no tawdry ambition of politics would have divided my heart with you; you would have reigned over it alone; we would have left Washington to the vermin who devoured it, and made our kingdom in lands of peace and truth! It was not without relief I discovered that the Reverend Campbell, with his magpie mate, was gone. “Assuredly, no!” exclaimed the General, when I inquired whether the name of Doctor Ely, and the petition preferred of the Reverend Campbell, had re-colored his thoughts touching St. Augustine and the Florida Governorship; “assuredly, no! He who has that place from me must be emphatically two things--a man and a friend. The creature, Westfall, is emphatically neither. I can not guess, however, in what this sudden office-hunting excitement of our ghostly fathers finds its source. I asked the Reverend Campbell, was this Westfall known to him. He said, only by repute; that he urged the case at the request of Doctor Ely.” Clearing him on that question of purpose, I told the General of Doctor Ely's arrangement to be a Governor's chaplain in St. Augustine; and how, in a moment of gurgling exaltation concerning what might be, that unguarded magpie exposed the scheme of “calling” our Reverend Campbell to Doctor Ely's fat present pulpit, should it become vacant in favor of palms and orange groves. “And in that way runs the road!” exclaimed the General, full of leniency and amusement. “The preachers are becoming better politicians every day. Major, you and I must look to our lines, or some dominie may yet turn our flanks.”