“Let's have him with us now,” cried the General, briskly. “I shall not sleep for hours; and you, I take it, will stay awake in such a cause?”
“I would stand sleepless guard for weeks if it were to defend Peg,” said I.
“Think now and then, my friend, for your own defence.” The General said this with a look both quizzical and grave. Then, without pausing: “Write Noah a note in my name.” While I scribbled he walked to and fro. “I must ever ask you to write for me, since I am so unfortunate as to deny a proverb and be one whose sword was ever mightier than his pen.”
In the hall I discovered Jim, and told him to depart with our message to the Indian Queen.
“'Course I'll nacherally go, Marse Major,” said Jim, “but I was jes' waitin' to see you-all, an' ask how soon you reckons we'll go caperin' back to Tennessee.”
“Why,” I demanded, “what has made you so soon homesick?”
“It aint that, Marse Major,” and Jim gave to his words a melancholy whine, “but we-all can't stand d'pace yere. For a week Jim was as happy an' chirpy as a drunkard at a barbecue. But since you locks that closet do', Jim's sort o' been obleeged to buy whiskey for himse'f; an' what you think? They charge Jim five cents a drink for whiskey that don't cost two bits a gallon all along d'Cumberland! They's shorely robbers; an' they jes' nacherally takes Jim's money off him so fas' he cotch cold.”
“Go on, you rogue!” said I. “Here is a Mexican dollar to bolster your finances. We're not yet bankrupt, Jim.”
Noah came to us spattered of travel, and with the high riding-boots he wore on the road. I took a deal of pleasure for a buoyancy I observed in him, since I read it as a sign of whitest promise. Nor was I to be cast down from that hope.
“You are to know,” said Noah, turning to the General, “that I was two days before your letter with the Reverend Ely. In the first of our conversations he held his head loftily; in the end, he came something under control. Your letter much dismayed him, and after that his courage ran very thin indeed. Now he quite agrees he knew nothing, and was wrong and false in all he wrote. I dragged him to New York with me. I have Mrs. Eaton's innocence here, in these papers.” Noah laid a sealed package by the General's elbow. They were from the Reverend Ely, as well as from the folk of the hotel wherein that Ely said Peg lodged. “They are oath-made; they prove Mrs. Eaton chaste as snow.”