Peg stepped in; she was white to the lips; and this paleness of ivory showed the more on her because of the great dark eyes and those midnight shadows to dwell within her hair. Save for this pallor, however, she seemed steady as a rock. It was on the outside, though, for no sooner was I seated again than she drifted down before my feet on the floor, and, with her head on my knee, broke into a passion of sobbing. I let my hand, for sympathy, rest a moment on her poor head, and when I thought she would have cried enough, lifted her up and placed her in a chair. “What is it?” I said. “I thought I was to see no more tears from you.” This I threw off in half sprightly tones to rally Peg. “Nor shall you,” cried she, “but I was fair spent and beaten for want of a good cry. And you should know”--she was giving me a trace of brightness now--“that crying is so much like conversation, to cry alone is like talking to one's self. I can not go to my husband; and the General, good and kind, is with it all too old and too great, and, therefore, too much out of my reach. I've just you; and that's how rich I am for confidants. I've not a woman to be friend to me in all the world; nor would I trust her if I had. I've just you; and so you are like to see a deal of worry.” “All that is mighty sweet,” I returned, “and every word a flower. And yet, what is the wrong?” “And simply nothing, after all,” she replied. “Only it's so much more horrible to see it with your eyes than hear it with your ears.” Peg put a note into my hands. “It came through the post; and doubtless means no more than the malevolence which was author to it.” The note had no name; nothing to indicate its parentage. It read: “Revenge is sweet! I have you in my power; and I shall burn you as savages burn their victim at the stake. I pray that you live long to extend my pleasure. Think not that you can escape me. I would not that death nor any evil thing should take you out of my hand for half the world.” “The nameless devil!” I cried. “It is a woman's hand of writ, though the letters are made purposely big and sprawling. Have you any thought at who she should be?” “No,” returned Peg; “I can not so much as guess.” Peg and I talked the question up and down, I asking and she answering, and with the end we were where we started, that was nowhere at all. The Reverend Campbell came into my conjecturings, he and his magpie mate; but I did not mention them, for what would have been the use of feathering Peg's imagination with a surmise?