“Added to those cardinals,” laughed the General, “of 'wise and brave and true,' one would need but the other virtue of being my friend. When you say 'principles of politics,' Major, I should know what you mean. Still, with a now and then Calhoun exception, I am free to say I care only for your man and nothing for a measure. If it were an election, now, I should vote for a good man on a bad platform rather than a bad man on a good platform.”
“And why?” asked Noah. “For myself, I am not so sure.”
“You will turn sure,” replied the General, “if you but pause and recall your own experience. Measures are like batteries aboard ship. It is ever the man behind the measure, as it is the man behind the gun. If he be 'wise and brave and true,' good. If he be otherwise;—why, hang him and have you another man.”
As I was returning alone to my workshop, I overheard the voices of Peg and Jim within the room.
“An' so, Miss Peg,” Jim was saying, “as soon as ever your mammy gives Jim d'message an' that mouthful of whiskey, Jim shore lights out for you. Honey, Jim comes that fas', Jim does, he jes' natcherally leaves things on both sides of d'road. Your mammy's plumb sick, an' thar aint no sort o' doubt of it. Plumbago is what Jim allows it is.”
“My mother is ill,” said Peg, when I came in. “I sent your Jim down to get word from her. She wants me, and I would ask you to go with me to her if I dared.”
“That should call for no desperate courage,” said I.
The deep snows had been melting for many days, and, while the ground was now quite bare, it lay wet as a sponge, and the roads not to be thought of for horses. Peg's mother, however, lived but a little mile distant, and our way would lie through woodland for the most, with paths to wind in and out among the trees. These walks, being grassy, would do well enough for folk afoot.
“We must walk,” said Peg, “and since that be the order, I must go back for stronger boots to fend against this wet.”
When Peg returned from her own home and we would be setting forth, it was six years off her age to merely see her. For what mud and water we might meet, Peg had donned thick-soled, high-laced boots, and with these, and skirts cut short to match her boots, Peg appeared not an hour older than sixteen.