“Well, let him look,” Still growled, with a sudden change of tone. “He can look all he wants, and he won’t git around them bonds.” “Oh, no! I don’t say as he will,” the old officer answered. “I’d like to take ’em home with me—” Still began; but the clerk cut him short. “I can’t let you do that. You’ll have to look at ’em here in the office.” “Why, they’re nothin’ but—I want Colonel Welch here to look at ’em—they’ll show him how the lands come to me—I’ll bring ’em back——” “I can’t let you take ’em out of the office.” His tone was as dry as ever. “Well, I’d like to know why not? They don’t concern nobody but me, and they’re all ended.” “That’s the very reason you can’t take ’em out; they’re part of the records of this office——” “Well, I can take the bonds out, anyway,” Still persisted; “they is mine, anyhow.” “No, you can’t take them, either.” Still did not often lose his temper, or show it, if he did; but this time he lost it. “Well, I’ll show you if I can’t, before the year is out, Mr. Dockett. I’ll show you who I am!” He rose with much feeling. “I know who you are.” The old fellow turned and shot a piercing glance at him over his spectacles, and Major Welch watched complacently to see how it would end. “Well, if you don’t, I mean to make you know it. I’ll show you you don’t own this County. I’ll show you who is the bigger man, you or the people of this County. You think because you been left in this office that you own it; but I’ll——” “No, I don’t,” the old man said, firmly; “I know you’ve got negroes enough to turn me out if you choose; but I want to tell you that until you do I’m in charge here, and I run the office according to what I think is my duty, and the only way to change it is to turn me out. Do you want to see the papers or not? You can look at ’em here just as everybody else does.” “That’s right,” said Major Welch, meaning to explain that it was the law. Still took it in a different sense, however, and quieted down. He would look at them, he said, sulkily, and, taking the bundle, he picked out the same slips which young Gray had been examining. “You’re so particular about your old papers,” he said, as he held up one of the slips, “I wonder you don’t keep ’em a little better. You got a whole lot o’ red ink smeared on this bond.” “I didn’t get it on it.” The clerk got up and walked across the room to look at the paper indicated, adjusting his spectacles as he did so. One glance sufficed for him. “That ain’t ink, and if ’tis, it didn’t get on it in this office. That stain was on that bond when Leech filed it. I remember it particularly.” “I don’t know anything about that—I know it wa’n’t on it when I give it to him, and I don’t remember of ever having seen it before,” Still persisted. “Well, I remember it well—I remember speaking of it to him, because we thought ’twas finger-marks, and he said ’twas on it when you gave it to him.”