Mrs. Dockett discovered the wind taken completely out of her sails, and found herself actually forced into the position of making a tack and having rather to offer an apology to the ruffled little officer. She had never dreamed of preferring this new-comer to them, she declared. She could not but say that they had always acted in a most gentlemanly way, so far as she was concerned. She had, indeed, been most agreeably surprised. She had never, for a moment, dreamed of permitting this impudent upstart, whoever he was, to come into her house. Let him go to some of his colored friends. Of course, if they wished to leave her house—they must do so. Her head was rising again. Thurston hastened to interpose. Not at all—they were most charmed, etc. Only he didn’t know but she might not care to have them remain—and they could not do so if this man came. “He’s not coming. Let him try it.” And the irate lady sailed out to deliver her broadside to the new enemy that had borne down on her. She had no sooner disappeared than the Lieutenant’s face fell. “Gad! Larry, we are undone. It’s that Leech who used to live with old Bolter, and about whom they told the story of his trying to persuade his wife to let him get a divorce, and who shirked all through the war. Unless we can get rid of him it’s all up. We’re ruined.” “Freeze him out,” Middleton said, briefly. “You’ve begun well.” “Freeze——? Freeze a snow-bank! That’s his climate. He’d freeze in ——!” The little Lieutenant named a very hot place. Thurston had not been too soon in placing the line of discrimination clearly between themselves and the Provost Marshal, for the arrival of the latter in the county at once caused a change of conditions. On receipt of Mrs. Dockett’s decisive and stinging reply Leech immediately made application to Captain Middleton to enforce his requisition, but, to his indignation, he was informed that they were the only boarders, and that Mrs. Dockett managed her own domestic affairs: which, indeed, was no more than the truth. To revenge himself, the Provost took possession of Mr. Dockett’s office, and opened his bureau in it, crowding the old official into a back room of the building. Here, too, however, he was doomed to disappointment and mortification; for, on the old clerk’s representation of the danger to his records, and of their value, enforced by Mrs. Dockett’s persuasive arguments, Leech was required by Middleton to surrender possession and take up his quarters in an unoccupied building on the other side of the road. Here he opened his office under a flaring sign bearing the words, “FREEDMEN’S BUREAU.”