That was a dreary hour in the poor little home, but worse things were in store for them, for, as Mrs. Jocelyn said, when things are going wrong there is a terrible logic about them, and malign events follow each other with almost inevitable sequence.  All was wrong with the head of the family, and terrible were the consequences to his helpless wife and children.  Mr. Jocelyn heard a rumor of Mildred’s experience in the police court, and he went to the place that day and obtained some account of the affair.  More clearly and awfully than ever before he comprehended the depths into which he had fallen.  He had not been appealed to—­he had not even been told.  He did not stop to consider how good the reasons were for the course his family had taken, but, blind with anger and despair, he sought his only refuge from the hell within his breast, and began drinking recklessly.  By the time he reached the tenement where he dwelt he was in a state of wild intoxication.  A man at the door called him a drunken beast, at which Mr. Jocelyn grasped him by the throat and a fierce scuffle ensued.  Soon the whole populous dwelling was in an uproar, while the man retreated, fighting, up the stairways, and his infuriated assailant followed with oaths and curses.  Women and children were screaming, and men and boys pouring out of their rooms, some jeering and laughing, and others making timid and futile efforts to appease and restrain the liquor-crazed man.

Suddenly a door opened, and a pale face looked out; then a slight girlish figure darted through the crowd and clasped Mr. Jocelyn.  He looked down and recognized his daughter Mildred.  For a moment he seemed a little sobered, and then the demon within him reasserted itself.  “Get out of my way!” he shouted.  “I’ll teach that infernal Yankee to insult a Southern officer and gentleman.  Let me go,” he said furiously, “or I’ll throw you down the stairway,” but Mildred clung to him with her whole weight, and the men now from very shame rushed in and overpowered him.

He was speedily thrust within his own doorway, and Mildred turned the key after him and concealed it.  Little recked the neighbors, as they gradually subsided into quiet, that there came a crash of crockery and a despairing cry from the Jocelyns’ room.  They had witnessed such scenes before, and were all too busy to run any risk of being summoned as witnesses at a police court on the morrow.  The man whom Mr. Jocelyn had attacked said that he would see the agent of the house in the morning and have the Jocelyn family sent away at once, because a nuisance, and all were content with this arrangement.

Within that locked door a terrible scene would have been enacted had it not been for Mildred’s almost supernatural courage, for her father was little better than a wild beast.  In his mad rush forward he overturned the supper-table, and the evening meal lay in a heap upon the floor.  The poor wife, with a cry in which hope and her soul itself seemed to depart fell swooning on the children’s bed, and the little ones fled to the darkest corner of Mildred’s room and cowered in speechless fear.  There was none to face him save the slight girl, at whom he glared as if he would annihilate her.