“Hello, here he is!” said the leader, advancing. “Is this here where the damned rebel sheet is bein’ published?” He held in his hand a copy of the _Chronicle_. “This is the office of the _Charleston Chronicle_, sir.” The colonel’s control was complete. “Well, who are you?” “I am Charles W. Masters, the editor.” “Editor of the worst sheet of infamy and rebellion in the cradle of it all. Damn you, we have come in here to publish a Union paper! Here, read this.” The editorial the colonel had written had fallen to the floor and floated to the fire, where one corner began to crumple in the heat. The colonel read the order: OFFICE PROVOST MARSHAL, GENERAL D. S., Charleston, S. C., Feb. 20, 1865. SPECIAL ORDER NO. 1. The _Charleston Chronicle_ office is hereby taken possession of by the military authority of the United States. All materials and property of said newspaper of every kind will be turned over immediately to Messrs. Gen. Whipple and J. W. Jackson, who are hereby authorized to issue a loyal Union paper. They will report to Lieut.-Col. Woodford, Provost Marshal Gen. D. S., for all property taken possession of by them under this order. They will keep possession of this building now used for the paper. By command of Maj. Gen. Q. A. Gilmore, Lieut.-Col. 127th N. Y. Volunteers, Provost Marshal, Gen. D. S. “Get out, old man! You may thank your stars we don’t set the niggers on you.” And as the lonely man walked down the long-trodden steps he seemed to see below him on the stairway one who had welcomed him at Camellia long years ago. Her eyes looked up to his as of yore, and the same sweet smile parted her lips. But now her arms were outstretched to him, and she seemed to be trying to tell him something that made her bosom heave and her eyes fill with tears. CHAPTER XLV The women and old men left in the city, and the entire Union army of occupation, read with avidity the first issue of the _Chronicle_ under its new management. Things in the office were necessarily in a jumble, so there was no original editorial work to do. The news columns told how the _Palmetto State_, the ironclad Ervin had devised, had been blown up, and how the dense volumes of smoke had risen emblematically and by some weird chance had formed themselves into a symmetrical palmetto tree, its leaves and branches perfectly distinct; some had even seen the rattlesnake coiled about the body. There were tidings, too, of the great fire at the Northeastern railway depot, and of the explosions of gunpowder there, killing more than a hundred men, women and children. But most readers looked eagerly for the editorial page and found there a clipping from the _New York Independent_. “BABYLON IS FALLEN.”