distributed the mail from the limp leather bag, he realized himself as an official of a great republic.  He loved to proudly ignore, and not even seem to see, the interested and gaping faces watching the boxes.  Doctor Gordon’s box was an object of especial interest.  Indeed, that was the only one to be depended upon to contain something when the two mails per day arrived.  Gordon, moreover, took the only New York paper which reached the little hamlet.  Alton had no paper of its own.  The nearest was printed in Stanbridge.  One man, the Presbyterian minister, subscribed to the Stanbridge paper, and paid for it in farm produce.  He had a little farm, and tilled the soil when he was not saving souls.  The Stanbridge paper had arrived the night before, and the minister had been good enough to impart some of its contents to the curious throng in the store.  He was accustomed to do so.  Likewise Gordon, when he was not too hurried, would open his New York paper, and read the most startling “headers” to a wide-eyed audience.  This morning the paper was in the box as usual, with a number of letters.  The men pressed in a suggestive way around James, as he took the parcel from the postmaster.  There were no lock-boxes.  James hesitated a moment.  He had not much time, but he was good-natured, and the eager hunger in the men’s eyes appealed to him.  There was something pathetic about this outreaching for intelligence of their kind, and its progress or otherwise, among these plodding folk, who had so to count their pence that a newspaper was an unheard-of luxury to them.

James opened the paper and glanced over the headlines on the first page.  Now, had he looked, he might have seen something sinister and malicious in the curious eyes, but he was so dazed by the very first thing he saw as to be for the moment oblivious to anything else.  On the right of the first page was the headline:  “Strange dual life of a prominent physician in Alton, New Jersey.  Doctor Thomas B. Gordon has lived with his wife for years, and called her his widowed sister, Mrs. Clara Ewing.  Upon her death, a few days since, he revealed the secret.  Will give no reasons for this strange conduct, simply states that he was justified, even compelled, by circumstances.”  Then followed a caricature portrait of Gordon, a photograph of the house, one of the village church, and the cemetery and Gordon’s wife’s grave, with various surmises and comments, enough to fill the column.  James paled as he read.  He had not known of Gordon’s action in telling that the dead woman was his wife.  He looked around in a bewildered fashion, and met the hungry eyes.  One small, mean face of a small man peered around his shoulder gloatingly.  “Some news this mornin’?” he observed, with a smack of the lips, as if he tasted sweets.

Then James arose to the occasion.  He faced them all and smiled coolly.  “Yes,” he replied; “you mean about Doctor Gordon?”

There was a murmur of assent.