The pastor, Dominie Edgar, calls often at the Hermitage; for he feels that the General may require some special spiritual grooming. One day he observes that convert's saw-handles, oiled and neat and ready for blood, on a mantel, prayerfully crossed beneath a portrait of the blooming Rachel. The good dominie is shocked, but does not show it. He picks up one of the saw-handles. “This has seen service, doubtless,” he remarks tentatively. “Ay!” responds the General grimly; “it has seen good service.” Dominie Edgar puts the saw-handle back in place, and his curiosity pushes no farther afield. He rightly conjectures it to be the weapon which cut down the slanderous Dickinson, and mentally holds that it will more advantage the soul of his convert to touch as scantily as may be upon topics so ferocious. Shifting his ground, Dominie Edgar asks: “General, do you forgive your enemies?” “Parson,” says the convert, “I forgive _my_ enemies, and welcome. But I shall never”--here he points up at the portrait of the blooming Rachel, which seems to lovingly follow his every motion with its painted patient eyes--“I shall never forgive _her_ enemies. My feud shall follow them, and the memory of them, to the end of time.” Dominie Edgar sits down with his convert to show him the error of his obdurate ways. He lectures cogently. It is to be feared, however, that his doctrinal seed of forgiveness falls upon hard, intractable ground; for, while the convert says never a word, the lecture serves but to light again in those blue eyes what lamps of hateful battle burned there on a certain fierce May morning in that popular Kentucky wood. The long days come and go, and the General lives on in fortune, peace, and honor. Then the end draws down; for the General has run his threescore years and ten, and well-nigh ten years more. Wizard Lewis sits by his bedside, and never leaves him. “I want to go, Major,” murmurs the General to Wizard Lewis; “for she is over there.” He raises his eyes to the portrait of the blooming Rachel, and looks upon it long and lovingly. “Major!”--Wizard Lewis presses the thin hand--“see that they make my grave by her side at the garden's foot!” The General drifts into a stupor, Wizard Lewis holding fast his hand. The good dominie Edgar is on his knees at prayer. From the porch outside the sick room are heard the sobs and moans of the mourning blacks. Wizard Lewis attempts to recall the dying General. “What would you have done with Calhoun,” he asks, “had he persisted in his 'Nullification' designs?” The blue eyes rouse, and sparkle and glance with old-time fire. “What would I have done with Calhoun?” repeats the General, his voice renewed and strong; “Hanged him, sir!--hanged him as high as Haman! He should have been a warning to traitors for all time!”