"Thank you, Mr. Lambert, not--there. Let us turn about." CHAPTER XX. Within the fortnight that followed came a climax in the life of Loring, and astrologers who could have heard would have made much of such a combination of strange influences. Having told the General that it was his desire to find a quiet place in the northwestern section of the new city, Loring had moved back to the hotel. Having told the rector he desired to obtain table board at Mrs. Burton's, it of course resulted that the worthy ecclesiastic should speak to her at first opportunity, and that she should speedily come in search of Mr. Loring to inquire why he had failed to carry out his plan, and further, to intimate that on the strength of the rector's representations she had ordered a much nicer set of china, and laid in a stock of provisions that just then were to be had at lower rates, which, except that she expected him, she could not have thought of doing. Indeed, Mrs. Burton not only called once at his office, but followed it up by a visit to his lodging, where she shed tears in the presence of the person from whom he rented his rooms, and, this still proving ineffectual, she came again to department headquarters with the manifest object of taking the General and his staff into her confidence, to the equally manifest dismay of the chief and the disgust of his adjutant-general, neither of whom could check the volume of the good lady's words of woe. Loring found his soldierly commander grinning whimsically when he dropped in to say good-morning. The General was that rare combination--a devout churchman and a stalwart fighter. Time and money had he devoted to the building up of this little church in the wilderness, and the communion service was his gift. More than once had he knelt to receive the sacred elements from the trembling hands of the worthy rector and listen to Mrs. Burton's effusive "Amen!" on his left ere she parted with the cup that was then passed to his bearded lips. At the chancel rail all good Christians knelt in common and meekly bowed their heads, but when Mrs. Burton came up to headquarters with a rail of her own, the General couldn't stand it, and said so to worthy Lambert, who remonstrated with the widow.