he set his sharp tongue
going against the elder there would be no end to the trouble. He
glanced up and saw the subject of his thoughts coming slowly down the
road in his old buckboard.

Why the Glenoro mail-carrier was called Coonie instead of Henry Greene,
which was his real name, was, like all that gentleman's personal
affairs, shrouded in mystery. Some doubted that Coonie himself knew,
though if he did it was not at all likely he would divulge the secret,
for he guarded very carefully his own private business. Whatever
concerned himself held a monopoly of his reticence, however, for in
matters of current gossip he was second to none in the whole township
of Oro. He beat even Miss Cotton and Mrs. Fraser, for, whereas they
might arrive at a stage when they had nothing more to tell, not so
Coonie. If he found himself without some startling news he
manufactured it to suit the occasion.

His vehicle was an old buckboard with a wide seat, and a rickety old
chariot it was. His custom was to sit slouching at one end of the
seat, one foot upon the dashboard, the other dangling down in the dust,
thus making the other end of the seat stick away up in the air, as
though to suggest to any chance pedestrian that he was almost crowded
out already and could accommodate no one.

His horse was a poor, decrepit, old creature, whom he had named Bella,
after the eldest of the pretty Hamilton girls, much to that young
lady's disgust. In spite of old Bella's skeleton appearance and
hobbling gait, Coonie took great pride in her and offered many times to
trot her against Sandy Neil's racer. Her extreme lameness seemed quite
appropriate, however, for in this respect she was the fitting
complement to her master. For poor Coonie was a cripple, scarcely able
to bear his long body on his weak ankles, and when the villagers saw
him stumble painfully out of his vehicle at the post-office and drag
himself to the veranda, even the person outraged by his latest flight
of fancy forgave and pitied him. Everyone felt that the nimbleness of
his tongue was perhaps only some slight compensation for the
uselessness of his feet.

His daily drive through Glenoro was something of an event to all the
inhabitants, for he was willing to stop everywhere and anywhere and
tell the latest news. Old Andrew considered him a most pernicious
individual and a breeder of evil in the Glen, and for that reason as
well as on general principles, Coonie took a p