As though in a dream I took in under my great cloak, and having my arm about her would now hold her close and warm to my side. Her ear was over my heart as her face lay pressed against me, and I only hope she could understand the story of that .  
For myself I was in a mid-swirl of confusion, with my wits all upside down, and no clear notion of what I did or why. The General's word of that Florida business, the cabinet to break and Peg to go away from me, made it for the moment as though the floor of the world had given way beneath my feet. It would provoke and seem the end of things.
 
It was never said of me, even by the least informed, that I would be swayed in any kind or made to pause in what I went about by the counsel of conventionality. I had lived a life half-bitted, and for the main with on my neck; the last I cared for were the frowns or the smiles of folk. If it were a woman to talk against the teeth of my fancy, I would turn my back on her; if a man, I had a way to gag his tongue if it should be no better than the of my pistol. And yet, however loose my habit or dull my knowledge of those matters, I did not go without a fashion of cold shock on Peg's behalf when I was so far my own man again as to dwell on our position—we, through the snow and the darkness, locked in that carriage.
 
This mood of was so much in the upper-hand with me that it came to be the impulse, and would suggest the topic I laid tongue to when first I found my words. It was not without a effort of the will that I obliged myself to some steadiness of . Then, and not very , I might observe, I, in the manner of one who thinks aloud, and surely as much to myself as to Peg, gave to an under my breath. Indeed, I would not have looked for Peg to hear me, since her head—pretty ears and all—was buried beneath the thick folds of my cloak.
 
“What if folk were to know!” I said.
 
Then came Peg's voice like a half of despair.
 
“What should I care who knows?” cried she. “It is my heart's funeral! My heart is dead and we go upon its funeral in this snow!”
 
At that, without well what I was about, and doubtless to it by the note of in Peg's tones, I held her to my side even more closely than before. Thus we remained for a long space in utter silence, neither speaking a word, while the quiet storm stole down upon us and the slow wheels forced their passage through the white cold levels of the snow.
 
After a bit, Peg's head, curls in a and removed, was thrust outside my cloak, which garment, however, she would continue to wrap about her and hold with her hand.
 
“I would still be near to you,” she said, as though in explanation of the cloak, “though I am no longer cold.”
 
The mere truth was, the night, while a choke and of snow, was nothing chill, being bare freezing for a temperature and never a breath of air to stir, and the inside of the big carriage as warm as many a library. And yet, when I would first get in, I found Peg shivering as with an ague. That was gone now and she more in control.
 
Peg would now be more mistress of herself and speak with a measure of firmness.
 
“You have heard?” she asked.
 
“The General,” I returned, “has told me you are to go to Florida. But how should you have been told? Or was it known to you for long?”
 
This latter I put a little viciously, for it struck me on the moment how Peg might have been aware of this new destiny for days, and hidden it from me. But no; she had come to her information but an hour before. Even while the General with his hand on my shoulder gave me the story of it, the letter which told the news to Peg was put within her hands.
 
“It was to have been a secret,” said she, “and my husband would have kept it until his return. But he will be detained beyond his plans; he wrote me because of preparations I must make.”
 
While Peg said this, her face was held up towards mine, and even in the vague lights, which were rather the ghosts of lights than any radiance however dim, I could catch some whiteness of it.
 
Suddenly her head was in its old resting place over my heart, with the cloak to again become its cover.
 
“Watch-dog,” whispered Peg, and I might tell how deeply she was stricken by the quaver of her voice, as much as by a trembling that swept her as a the surface of a ; “watch-dog, I felt that I would not live unless I saw you. Do you me? Do you own shame for your little friend? I could not help it; I sent for Rivera, and made him fetch this carriage. We are alone—hidden from the world's eyes. I have torn a night from the hands of Time to be no one's night save ours. I waited by the lamp; my soul called to you and I knew you would come. I would not send; I was sure you would be with me without that. I should have died if I had not found you. Say that I did right, watch-dog. Say that it was right! I only cry for your one word; what others will think or say I care not, but I could not bear up against your anger! Say that I did right; say it!—say that you are glad.”
 
“I will say it all and intend it all, my little one!” Here I stroked Peg's tangle of curls as one would pet a child.
 
My whole being was wrapped in a storm and my caged a whirlwind. I could be calm enough, , and yet I was growing aware of that tempest of spirit which shook me like an aspen. I had been dull—dull to the point of crime; but now my wisdom would begin to sharpen and brighten itself.
 
Still, I had so much coolness to call my own that I was glad of the fact of Rivera. I remember thinking on that; for, with no more words than the dumb, he was as secret as a and as honest, withal, and single-hearted as a hound. There would be none to know; as Peg said, she had torn a night from to be ours and ours alone.
 
While these thoughts went tumbling down the steeps of my conjecturings, I continued mechanically to Peg's hair, and it felt like a web of in my coarse fingers.
 
“Contemn you, child!” said I, and my voice was not much louder than had been hers, and I down my head so that she might hear; “contemn you! I would as soon the snow outside, new given from the sky, denouncing it for .”
 
Peg began to weep, and I could hear the sharp of her . Suddenly the moan came sighing up to me:
 
“Oh, if there were no such word as right or justice or duty, but only love—just love!” Then with a quick backward twist of her form that was like an impulse, and as of a swift grace as any of that long ago whereof she would so often make me think, Peg turned herself in my arms, and with her own encircling my neck lay crying on my bosom. I held her close—closer. I could tell the beating of her heart, count the footfalls of her nature as though she were parcel of myself. How I loved her! adored her!—my spirit would fall on its knees to her for its .
 
The while, too, and with my soul at these prayers, my would arrest me for the I was. Where should be that conscience the General on? Or where that honor which was to have been as a to check my strayings? That honor was where love would take the field against it; that conscience was so much of the right it would frame an argument of and claim superior liberty for superior love, and be all for carrying Peg away. My boasted manhood was a rope of sand!
 
Even now, as weary-white with years I tell this tale of dead and other days, I yet wonder upon that discovery of myself. This was what I : I had loved Peg from the start; the General's jest was sober truth. I would worship her, and then cheat myself with lie and to hide my villainy against my own detection. And now when the mask was fallen and I stood face to face with the true image of my , would I still press forward to my sins? Or would I think on the good General, and the pain and the stain for each of us which I was about to compass?
 
It was this to run in my mind, but all in a dimmest way to be imagined, and as though it were a dream and nothing true. As bonds to stay me, these thoughts came to be no more than packthreads; as to uphold me, trembling to a fall, they proved the merest, reeds to lean on. With Peg cradled in my arms, her heart beating on my own, she filled out the world for me and thrust all else beyond the frontier of my outmost hope or fear. I wanted only Peg, would no other call, and whether it were right or wrong or black or white I cared not. Caught fast in the mills, I was wholly ground between Peg and my mighty love for her. In a egotism and the selfishness that goes wanting heart or conscience, I would set torch to the skies before I gave her up.
 
It is the fair wellhead of how a man is thus strange to himself; how he will defeat his own best prophecy and be as opposite as night and day to all he promised. Folk have never accounted me weak, and I myself would have said I was a man of stone. I have been described for one of resolution. I have spurred my horse across the front of beaten troops, terror-whipped and in retreat. I've ridden against them, and with word and point of sword forced them to a halt. I've wheeled them, and, since they would not go without, driven them back like sheep; and then, when they would be of a braver hope, taken their lead and whirled them like lions upon the they lately fled from, and won a battle with them. And now I, who was in the face of men, had only a will of water for this girl who wept across my heart.
 
“Take me away!” she cried; “oh, take me away!”
 
Then it was my love swept down upon her like a strong wind. I take shame to repeat what I said. Bluntly I would disregard all claims, honor, forget the General and defy the rest; we would wander to new regions, she and I, and set up our of blind love. Carried by my soul's wish, I would leave her nothing ; I would bow down at her feet and beg of her to come with me.
 
As I spoke, Peg would seem to turn more calm and comforted. She did not withdraw from my arms, but rested in them like a child. And yet there arose a sad to wrap her about that was a check and a bar to me.
 
“Watch-dog,” said Peg at last, and her manner was the manner of one who grieves, “watch-dog, I am a wicked woman. I live my life backward, and it would be as though I could not help or save myself. My feet take hold on baseness, and my ha............