."

"And you are the Postmaster?" I said, throwing into my voice the respect
and awe that I felt were expected.

"That same," with a salute.

"That explains the flag, then; you are bound to keep that flying, I
suppose."

"Bound, sir? Yes, but by no law is it."

"How, then?"

"For twenty-five years I marched and fought under that same flag," said
the old soldier, dropping into his brogue, "and under it, plaze God,
I'll die."

I looked at the old man. In his large dark-blue eyes shone that "fire
that never slumbers"--the fire of loyal valor, with its strange power to
transform common clay into men of heroic mould. The flag, the garden,
the postoffice--these were Ould Michael's household gods. The equipment
of the postoffice was primitive enough.

"Where are the boxes?" I inquired; "the letter-boxes, you know; to put
the letters into."

"An' what wud I do puttin' them into boxes, at all?"

"Why, to distribute the mail so that you could find every man's letter
when he calls for it."

"An' what would I be doin' findin' a man's letter for him? Shure an'
can't he find it himself on the counter there?" pointing to a wide plank
that ran along the wall.

I explained fully the ordinary system of distributing mail to him.

"Indade, 'tis a complicated system intoirely," and then he proceeded to
explain his own, which he described as "simple and unpretenshus" and,
sure enough, it was; for the letters were strewn upon the top of the
counter, the papers and other mail-matter thrown underneath, and every
man helped himself to his own.

"But might there not be mistakes?" I suggested. "A man might take his
neighbor's letter."

"An' what would he do wid another man's letter forby the discooshun that
might enshoo?"

I was very soon to have an opportunity of observing the working of Ould
Michael's system, for next day was mailday and, in the early afternoon,
men began to arrive from the neighboring valleys for their monthly mail.
Ould Michael introduced me to them all with much ceremony and I could
easily see that he was a personage of importance among them. Not only
was he, as postmaster, the representative among them of Her Majesty's
Government, but they were proud of him as standing for all that was
heroic in the Empire's history; for a man who had touched shoulders with
those who had fought their way under India's fierce suns and through
India's swamps and jungles, from Calcutta to Lucknow and back, was no
common c