So the Provost, being baffled here, had to content himself, as he might, at the court-house tavern, where he soon laid off a new campaign. His principal trouble there, lay in the presence of the dark, sallow Captain McRaffle, whose saturnine face scowled at him from the upper end of the table, and kept him in a state of constant irritation. The only speech the Captain ever addressed to him was to ask if he played cards, and on his saying he “never played games,” he appeared to take no further interest in him. The Provost, however, kept his eye on him. The effect of the Provost’s appearance was felt immediately. The news of his arrival seemed to have spread in a night, and the next day the roads were filled with negroes. “De wud had come for ’em,” they said. They “had to go to de Cap’n to git de papers out o’ de buro.” Only the old house-servants were left, and even they were somewhat excited. This time those who left their homes did not return so quickly. Immediately after the news of the surrender came, a good many of the negroes had gone off and established settlements to themselves. The chief settlement in the Red Rock neighborhood was known as “The Bend,” from the fact that it was in a section half surrounded by a curve of the river. It was accessible from both sides of the river, and in the past had been much associated with runaway negroes. It had always been an unsavory spot in the county, and now, the negroes congregating there, it had come into greater ill repute than ever. It was dubbed with some derision, “Africa.” Here Jim Sherwood and Moses had built cabins, and shortly many others gathered about them. This, however, might not have amounted to much had not another matter come to light. The Provost was summoning the negroes and enrolling them by hundreds, exciting them with stories of what the Government proposed to do for them, and telling them the most pernicious lies: that they need not work, and that the Government was going to feed them and give them all “forty acres and a mule apiece.” Even the older negroes were somewhat excited by these tales, and, finally, Mammy Krenda asked Dr. Cary if it was true that the Government was going to give them all land. “Of course not. Who says so?” asked the Doctor. “I heah so,” said the old woman. Even she was beginning to be afraid to tell what she had heard. Contemporaneously with this, an unprecedented amount of lawlessness suddenly appeared: chicken-houses were robbed; sheep and pigs and even cattle were stolen, without there being any authority to take cognizance of the thefts or any power to punish. Andy Stamper and several others of the neighbors came over to see Dr. Cary about the matter. They had been to the court-house the day before “to see about things,” Andy said, and “had found every nigger in the county piled up in front of that Leech’s door.”