anybody else’s, but just to help fill up the paper."

Well, sir, you ought to have seen him! His red face fairly puffed out, like a young-one’s rubber balloon. He whirled round on the edge of his chair—he was too big to move in any other part of it—and glared at me. What did I mean by that? Hey? Was my punkin head sp’ilin’ now that warm weather had come, or what? Had I heard what he told my partner that very mornin’?

"Yes," says I, "I heard it. But I judged you must have broke your rule about drinkin’ liquor, or else your dyspepsy has struck to your brains. No sane person would set out to make Abubus Payne anythin’ more responsible than keeper of a pig pen. You didn’t mean it, of course."

He didn’t! He’d show me what he meant! Abubus was the most honest, able man on the whole blessed sand-heap, and he was goin’ to be postmaster. Mary Blaisdell was an old maid, good enough of her kind, maybe, but the place for her was some kind of an asylum or home for incompetent females. He’d sign a petition to put her in one of them places, but nothin’ else. Abubus was just as good as app’inted already.

We had it back and forth. There was consider’ble chair thumpin’ and hollerin’, I shouldn’t wonder. Anyhow, afore ’twas over every loafer on the main road was crowdin’ ’round us and Jim Henry Jacobs was pacin’ up and down back of the counter with the most worried look on his face ever I see there. It ended by the Major’s jumpin’ to his feet and headin’ for the door.

"You—you—you tarry old imbecile," he hollers, shakin’ a fat forefinger at me, "I’ll show you a few things. I’ll never set foot in this rathole of yours again."

"You better not," I sung out. "If you dare to, I’ll—"

"What?" he interrupts. "You’ll what? I’ll be back here to-morrow night. Then what’ll you do?"

"I’ll show you Mary Blaisdell’s petition," I says. "And the names on it’ll make you curl up and quit like a sick caterpillar."

"Humph! I’ll show _you_ a petition for Abubus Payne, next postmaster of Ostable, with a string of names on it so long you’ll die of old age afore you can finish readin’ ’em. Bah!"

With that he went out and I went into the back room to wash my face in cold water.

I wrote the headin’ to the Blaisdell petition afore I turned in that very night. Next mornin’ I 

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