MR. JONADAB LEECH TURNS UP WITH A CARPET-BAG AND OPENS HIS BUREAU
The young officers at the court-house meantime had fared very well. It is true that most of the residents treated them coldly, if civilly, and that the girls of the place, of whom there were quite a number, turned aside whenever they met them, and passed by with their heads held high, and their eyes straight to the front, flashing daggers. But this the young men were from experience more or less used to.
Reely Thurston told Middleton that if he would leave matters to him, he would engineer him through the campaign, and before it was over would be warbling ditties with all the pretty girls in a way to make his cousin, Miss Ruth Welch, green with envy. The lieutenant began by parading up and down on his very fine horse; but the only result he attained was to hear a plump young girl ask another in a clear voice, evidently meant for him to hear, “What poor Southerner,” she supposed, “that little Yankee stole that horse from!” He recognized the speaker as the young lady he had seen looking at them from the door of the clerk’s office the morning of their arrival.
Brutusville, the county seat where they were posted, was a pretty little straggling country village of old-fashioned houses amid groves of fine old trees, lying along the main road of the county, where it wound among shady slopes, with the blue mountain range in the distance. Most of the houses were hip-roofed and gray with age. The river—the same stream that divided Red Rock from Birdwood—passed near the village, broadening as it reached the more level country and received the waters of one or two other streams. Before the war there had been talk of establishing deep-water connections with the lower country, as the last rapids of any extent were not far below Brutusville. Dr. Cary, however, had humorously suggested that they would find it easier to macadamize the river than to make it navigable.
THE GIRLS OF THE PLACE TURNED ASIDE, WHENEVER THEY MET THEM AND PASSED BY WITH THEIR HEADS HELD HIGH.
The county seat had suffered, like the rest of the county, during the war; but as it happened, the main body of the enemy had been kept out of the place by high water, and the fine old trees did much to conceal the scars that had been made.
The old, brick court-house in the middle of the green, peeping out from among the trees, with its great, classical portico, was esteemed by the residents of the village to be, perhaps, the most imposing structure in the world. Mr. Dockett, the clerk—who had filled this position for nearly forty years, with the exception of the brief period when, fired by martial enthusiasm, he had gone off with Captain Gray’s company—told Lieutenant Thurston a day or two after the latter’s arrival, that while he had never been to Greece or, indeed, out of the State, he had been informed by those who had been there that the court-house was, perhaps, in some respects, more perfect than any building in Athens. Lieutenant Thurston said he had never been to Greece either, but he was quite sure it was. He also added that he considered Mr. Dockett’s own house a very beautiful one, and thought that it showed evidences, in its embellishments, of that same classical taste that Mr. Dockett admired so much. Mr. Dockett, while accepting the compliment with due modesty, answered that if the lieutenant wished to see a beautiful house he should see Red Rock. And thereupon began new matter, the young officer gently leading the old gentleman to talk of all the people and affairs of the neighborhood, including the charms of the girls.