The little General made old Julius burnish up his buttons until they shone like gold, and then rode into the village to interview the officer in command. He was stopped on the street by Leech, and was ordered to cut them off immediately if he did not wish him to do it for him, on which the gallant old Confederate stated to that functionary as placidly as he might have returned an answer to Miss Thomasia on the subject of roses, that if Leech so much as attempted to lay his hand on him, he would kill him immediately; and the look in his eyes was so resolute and so piercing that Leech, who supposed from this that he was fully armed, slunk away to secure a squad of soldiers to enforce his order. The General rode serenely on to find Middleton. No one was present at the interview. But it became known afterward that the General had begun by an intimation that he was ready to renew his polite offer of the pair of duelling pistols to Captain Middleton, if the Captain wished to give a gentleman who found himself temporarily in a somewhat embarrassing position, a gentleman’s satisfaction; and that he had come away, not, indeed, with this satisfaction, but, at least, with renewed esteem for the young men, whom he continued to speak of as “most gentlemanly young fellows”; and he covered his buttons with cloth. Steve Allen let Miss Thomasia cover his with crêpe, and having led Leech into questioning him as to the reason for this, said that it was mourning because a certain cowardly hound had only barked at Mammy Krenda one day, instead of attempting to touch her, and giving her the opportunity to cut the skin from him. Dr. Cary found his buttons cut off by Mrs. Cary and Miss Blair—“to prevent,” Blair said, “their being defiled by sacrilegious hands.” Jacquelin Gray was at this time confined to his lounge, by his wound; but it had this drop of consolation for his mother and Aunt Thomasia, that so long as he stayed there he could not be subjected to what others underwent. They reckoned, however, without their host. One afternoon Leech rode into the Red Rock yard with a squad of soldiers at his back, and riding across the grass to the very door, dismounted and stamped up the steps, and, without waiting for an answer to his loud rap, stalked into the hall, with his men behind him. Where he had come from no one knew; for he had ridden in the back way. It transpired afterwards that he had stopped for a minute at the overseer’s house.