helped her brother in the post-office was a treat to see. She wa’n’t exactly what you’d call young, and the world hadn’t been all fair winds and smooth water for her, by a whole lot; but, in spite of it, she’d managed to keep sweet and fresh. She and Henry and I had got to be good friends and I gen’rally took a walk up towards their house of a Sunday or managed to run in at the post-office buildin’ at least once every week-day and have a chat with ’em.

When I heard of Henry’s dyin’ so sudden my fust thought was about Mary and what would she do. How was she goin’ to get along? I thought of that even durin’ the funeral, and now, the day after it, when I went up to see her, I was thinkin’ of it still. And, at last, I believed I had got the answer to the puzzle.

Half the way back to the "Ostable Grocery, Dry Goods, Boots and Shoes and Fancy Goods Store," I was thinkin’ of my new notion and makin’ up my mind. The other half I was layin’ plans to put it through. When I walked into the store, Jim Henry met me.

"Hello, Skipper," says he, brisk and fresh as a no’theast breeze in dog days, "did you ever hear the story about the office-seekin’ feller in Washin’ton, back in President Harrison’s time? He wanted a gov’ment job and he happened to notice a crowd down by the Potomac and asked what was up. They told him one of the Treasury clerks had been found drowned. He run full speed to the White House, saw the President, and asked for the drowned chap’s place. ’You’re too late,’ says Harrison, 'I’ve just ap’inted the man that saw him fall in.’"

I’d heard it afore, but I laughed, out of politeness, and wanted to know what made him think of the yarn.

"Why," says he, "because that’s the way it’s workin’ here in Ostable. Poor old Blaisdell’s funeral was only yesterday and it’s already settled who’s to be the new postmaster."

Considerin’ what I’d been goin’ over in my mind all the way home from Mary’s, this statement, just at this time, knocked me pretty nigh out of water.

"What?" I gasped. "How did you know?"

"Why wouldn’t I know?" says he. "I got the advance information right from the oracle. I was told not ten minutes since that the ap’intment was to go to Abubus Payne."

I stared at him. "Abubus Payne!" says I. "Abubus—Are you dreamin’?"

He laughed. "I’d never dream a name like 'Abubus,’ he says, ’even after one of our 

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