dory" he meant a catboat I’d bought. She was named the _Glide_ and she could glide away from anything of her inches in the bay.

"But who’s goin’ to run that auto?" I asked again. "’Tain’t possible you’re goin’ to do it yourself. If she went by alcohol power, I could understand, but—""Hush up!" he says, forgettin’ to be mad for once and speakin’ actually plaintive. "Don’t talk that way, Snow," says he. "If you knew how much I wanted a drink you wouldn’t speak lightly of alcohol."

"Why don’t you take one, then?" I wanted to know. "I believe ’twould do you good. That and a square meal. If you’d forget your prunes and your nutmeats and your quack doctorin’—"

He was mad then, all right. To slur at the "World Famous" was a good deal worse than murder, in his mind. He expressed his opinion of me, free and loud. He said I’d ought to try Doctor Conquest, myself, for developin’ my brains. The Doctor was pretty nigh a vegetarian, he said, and my head was mainly cabbage—and so on. Incidentally he announced that Abubus was to run the new auto.

"Abubus!" says I. "Why, he don’t know a gas engine from a coffee mill! He wouldn’t know what the craft’s for."

"That’s all right," he says. "He’s been takin’ lessons at the garage in Hyannis and he can run it like a bird. He knows what it’s for. He! he! so do I. By the way, Snow, are you ready to give up the post-office to my candidate yet?"

"Give up?" says I. "Tut! tut! tut! I hate to hear a supposed sane man talk so. Mary Blaisdell handles the mail in the Ostable post-office for the next three years—longer, if she wants to."

"Bet you five she don’t," he says.

"Take the bet," says I.

He went out chucklin’. I wondered what he had up his sleeve. A week later I found out. Congressman Shelton, our district Representative at Washin’ton, came to Ostable to look the post-office situation over and, lo and behold you, he comes as Major Cobden Clark’s guest, to stay at his house.

When Jim Henry Jacobs learned that, he took me to one side to give me some brotherly advice.

"It’s all up for Mary now," he says. "She can’t win. Clark and Shelton are old chums in politics. There’s only one chance to beat Payne and that’s to bring forward a compromise candidate—a dark horse."

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