into the mail-bag, then waited to see it covered by the drift from the postmaster’s fingers.  “Don’t the world move, sir?” said the latter worthy.  “It hasn’t been so long since there wasn’t any mail for the West anyhow, and now look at this bag!  Kentucky, and this new Tennessee, and Mississippi, and Louisiana, and the Lord knows what besides!  Letters coming thick and fast to Mr. Jefferson, and letters going out from every one who has a dollar or an acre or a son or brother in those God-forsaken parts where Adam Gaudylock says they don’t speak English and you walk uphill to the river!  I like things snug, Mr. Rand, and this country’s too big and this mail’s too heavy.  You have correspondents out there yourself, sir.”

“Yes,” answered Rand, with indifference.  “As you say, Mr. Smock, all the world writes letters nowadays.  Certainly it is natural that from all over the West men should write to Mr. Jefferson.”

“Natural or not, they do it,” quoth Mr. Smock doggedly.  “I thought I heard the stage horn?”

Rand looked at his watch.  “Not yet.  It lacks some minutes of its time,” he said, and, leaning on the counter, waited until he saw the mail-bag filled and securely fastened.  Lounging there, he took occasion to ask after the health of Mr. Smock’s wife, and to commiserate the burnt garden without the window.  If the expression of interest was calculated, the interest itself was genuine enough.  A shrewd observer might have said that in dealing with the voters of his county Rand exhibited a fine fusion of the subtle politician with the well-wishing neighbour.  The facts that he was quite simply and sincerely sorry for the postmaster’s ailing wife, and that he had the yeoman’s love for fresh and springing green instead of withered leaf and stalk, in no wise militated against that other fact that it was his cue to conciliate, as far as might be, the minds of men.  He almost never neglected his cue; when he did so, it was because uncontrollable passion had intervened.  Now the postmaster, too, shook his head over the ruined garden, entered with particularity into the doctor’s last report, and by the time that Rand, with a nod of farewell, left the room, had voted him into the Governor’s chair, or any other seat of honour to which he might aspire.  “Brains, brains!” thought Mr. Smock.  “And a plain man despite his fine marriage!  If there were more like him, the country would be safer than it is to-day.  There is the horn!”

The stage with its four horses and flapping leather hanging, its heated, red-coated driver and guard, and its dusty passengers swung into town with great cracking of a whip and blowing of a horn, drew up at the post-office just long enough to deliver a plethoric mail-bag, and then rolled on in a pillar of dust to the Eagle.  The crowd about the post-office increased, men gathering on the steps as well as upon the porch above and on the parched turf beneath the mulberries.  There was a principle of division.  The Federalists,