and their friends, while Rand,
after a just perceptible hesitation, entered the small room where the
postmaster was filling, with great leisureliness, the leather mail-bag.
Besides himself there was no other there; even the window gave not upon
the porch, but on a quiet, tangled garden. He took the letter from his
breast pocket and stood looking at it. The postmaster, after the first
word of greeting, went on with his work, whistling softly as he handled
the stiffly folded, wax-splashed missives of the time. The wind was in
the west, and the fitful air came in from the withered garden and
breathed upon Rand's forehead. He stood for perhaps five minutes looking
at the letter, then with a curious and characteristic gesture of
decision he walked to the high counter and with his own hand dropped it
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