“Mark you, I do not say,” replied Noah, “that Calhoun, personally, so much as hears of these wrongs done in his name. Your friends will sometimes go farther in your cause than you will go for yourself. Let me briefly tell you what I know. Calhoun would succeed the General for the Presidency. He spins a web as fine as any spun of spiders. So curiously has he brought his forces to bear, that of the six he will own three of the General's cabinet--Berrien, Branch, and Ingham. He wanted the war office, and was craftily urging Hayne, of his own state, when the General unconsciously brushed his plan aside with Eaton. Now the Calhoun thought is to drive Eaton from the place; and to mock at Mrs. Eaton and stain her with slanders is the Palmetto idea of a method. The more cruel it is, the more likely to succeed; and the latter condones the ignobility. These folk play for a White House; and the greater the stake the less of scruple on the part of the players. Remember, too, these children of evil have just begun; the attacks, as they proceed, will mobilize a force. The women will be brought to their aid. We gagged the men's mouths with a duel; but who is to gag the women's, and how will he go upon the work?” This news about Calhoun was nothing by way of surprise. I knew him to be as ambitious as Lucifer; more, I was aware of him for no friend of the General; I had learned that much two years before. While it was within my knowledge, this enmity, I had not set it forth to the General; the truth of it would have done him no good, and gotten in the way. It would have served only to fire his wrath, and he was one most unmanageable when angry. Wherefore throughout the campaign, while the General and Calhoun were running mates, I said no word of the latter's secret feeling of envious jealousy and hate, and the General went to the election in the dark, believing the Vice-President to be among his staunchest friends. Thinking now of Peg, I began to glimpse a day when the Calhoun rancors would be worth the General's knowledge. “Assuming that Calhoun languishes to be President,” said I, “and intrigues for that object, what do you say to the radical sort of his States Rights position--going in for the right to nullify a general law, and secede at will from the national circle, and all that? Would you call Calhoun either politic or right to occupy those positions?