The boy drew near with curious eyes.  “Dad doesn’t know where it came from,” continued the shepherd.  “Does Pete know?”

The youth gave a low laugh of delight; “Course Pete knows.  Pete went up on Dewey this morning; ’way up to the old signal tree, and course he took me with him.  The sky was all soft and silvery, an’ the clouds was full, plumb full of gold, like that there.”  He pointed to the yellow coins on the floor.  “Didn’t Dad see?  Some of it must o’ spilled out.”

“Ah, yes, that was God’s gold,” said the older man softly.

The lad touched his friend on the arm, and with the other hand again pointed to the glittering heap on the floor.  “Pete says that there’s God’s gold too, and Pete he knows.”

The man started and looked at the boy in wonder; “But why, why should it come to me at such a time as this?” he muttered.

" ’Cause you’re the Shepherd of Mutton Hollow, Pete says.  Don’t be scared, Dad.  Pete knows.  It’s sure God’s gold.”

The shepherd turned to the fireplace and dropped the letter he had written upon the leaping flames.

CHAPTER XXII.

A letter from Ollie Stewart.

The Postoffice at the Forks occupied a commanding position in the northeast corner of Uncle Ike’s cabin, covering an area not less than four feet square.

The fittings were in excellent taste, and the equipment fully adequate to the needs of the service:  an old table, on legs somewhat rickety; upon the table, a rude box, set on end and divided roughly into eight pigeon holes, duly numbered; in the table, a drawer, filled a little with stamps and stationery, filled mostly with scraps of leaf tobacco, and an odd company of veteran cob pipes, now on the retired list, or home on furlough; before the table, a little old chair, wrought in some fearful and wonderful fashion from hickory sticks from which the bark had not been removed.

With every change of the weather, this chair, through some unknown but powerful influence, changed its shape, thus becoming in its own way a sort of government weather bureau.  And if in all this “land of the free and home of the brave” there be a single throne, it must be this same curiously changeable chair.  In spite of, or perhaps because of, its strange powers, that weird piece of furniture managed to make itself so felt that it was religiously avoided by every native who called at the Forks.  Not the wildest “Hill-Billy” of them all dared to occupy for a moment this seat of Uncle Sam’s representative.  Here Uncle Ike reigned supreme over his four feet square of government property.  And you may be very sure that the mighty mysterious thing known as the “gov’ment” lost none of its might, and nothing of its mystery, at the hands of its worthy official.