whirlpools of spelling.

In fact, a smattering of law, coupled with the taste for random browsing in every old book on which he could lay his hands, had given Gilbert the ability to draw up a will, a promissory note, or round an ardent yet decorous love-letter, with equal success.

It was nothing unusual that the men saw as they looked into the bleak March night, and yet they huddled together, listening spellbound and expectant. A week before there had been a breath of spring in the air. In a single day the heavy ice left the Moosatuck with a rush, to be lost in the bay; a flock of migrant robins rested and plumed themselves in the parsonage hedge; ploughing was possible in the fields that lay to the southwest, and the wiseacres, one and all, predicted an early spring. But in a single night this vision had vanished and winter returned in driving snow that, turning to rain, coated everything heavily with ice. Roadway, fences, and the sedate white colonial houses that flanked the elm-bordered main street absolutely glittered in such light as an occasional lantern on porch or fence post afforded. It seemed almost mocking to the men in the door of the post-office; in every way it had been a cruel season, this first winter of the War of the Rebellion. It was not yet a year since the entire North had been brought to its feet by the loss of Fort Sumter, and had sent forth an army of seventy-five thousand volunteers as its reply.

The gloom of repeated defeat settled heavy as a cloud of cannon smoke over New England, whose invincibility had given birth to the union of states that it now sought to preserve, the only recent glimmer of light having been Grant's capture of Fort Donelson in February.

This was discounted on the east coast by the terrifying career of the Merrimac, beforetimes a United States cruiser, but now in Confederate hands, that, by closely sheathing the wooden vessel with metal plates, had converted her into a deadly ram which no wooden ship could withstand, and already having ran amuck through the waters of Hampton Roads, showed the possibility of putting every Union port in peril.

Then had come the news this very Monday morning, vague in detail and almost unbelievable, that the Monitor, the mysterious invention of Ericsson, a craft that to the casual observer looked as harmless as any harbor buoy, going from New York under tow, had, on Sunday morning, met and vanquished the great fire-spitting dragon that guarded the entrance to the James.

It was for confirmation or details of this news that the men of Harley's Mills were waiting and listening for the mail-train that did not come, in their unfeigned anxiety interpreting its unusual delay as a bad omen.

Presently, a faint whistle struggled up against the fierce gusts of east wind; a locomotive headlight, gaining in power after every disappearance, flashed across the rolling fields that lay toward Westboro. The train was coming at last.

"Here, take these lanterns, boys," cried Gilbert, "and do some of you go down to meet her and come back with the mail-bag. It's a tough walk for Binks's boy to bring it up alone in this storm."

"'Lisha Potts, do you unhook that red light from the horse-post yonder, and if the news is good (Binks will likely have it from the train crew or some passenger), wave the light above your head as you come back." This to a broad-shouldered, up-country giant, with a grim, square jaw, and hair the color and consistency of rye stubble.

"Good God! I can't stand this waiting and not knowing!" Gilbert almost shouted as he closed the door behind the crowd and found himself alone in the now dimly lighted post-office, except for old Selectman Morse, white-haired and fragile, who, not being able to go out into the storm with the others, was groping his way towards the stove.

"If I had two sound legs," Gilbert continued, "my fifty years shouldn't stand between me and seeing and helping do what must be done down there south of Washington; the bitter part of it is staying here. Next month when the Felton ladies come back, I guess we'll have a telegraph operator right at the station, at least that's what Wheeler their foreman told me yesterday. You see, both Mr. Esterbrook and John Angus are directors in the Railroad Company, and what with one's wanting to hear the good news and the other the bad, we're likely to get it. Come back into the workroom, neighbor Morse. After your long wait you'll find a chair easier sitting than the coal-box lid."

"There's more than you that has to fight it out at home to give those that's gone free minds," replied the old man, shivering as he settled back in a carpet-covered rocker of strange construction. "Dan had turned forty when he went, and now little Dan has run off to follow him and he's scarce sixteen, so my fight must be fit out to keep son's wife and girl children in food meantime; but I hope the Lord'll understand and count it all for the same cause."

Gilbert, who had seated himself at his desk and was fumbling among some papers in an absent-minded way, wheeled toward the old man quickly.

"Of course He will, for that's what Lincoln wrote me, and he and the Lord have got to be of one mind in this business if it's going through as it must."

"Wrote you? Lincoln wrote you? When? How? Why didn't you tell the boys? They'd burst with pride to know a letter from Lincoln was in the town, much less right here in the post-office that's public property, so to speak!" cried Morse, leaving his chair and stiff limbs together, and coming toward the desk almost with a bound.

Gilbert started as he realized what secret had slipped past his lips, hesitated a moment, and then pulling a stool from under the desk, motioned his companion to sit beside him.

On the wall directly in front hung a very good engraving of Washington, in a home-made frame of charred wood; under it was suspended an old flint-lock, worm-eaten in stock and rusty at trigger. Below it, at one side of the desk so that it came face to face with the owner, a large colored lithograph of Lincoln was tacked to the wall, framed only by a wreath of shrivelled ground-pine and wax-berries.

Taking a key from his vest-pocket where it lay in company with bits of sugared flag-root, Gilbert wiped it carefully and unlocking a drawer in the desk that, to the casual glance, seemed merely an ornamental panel, took out two letters and a double daguerreotype case that held the pictures of a young woman and a little girl a year old. Placing these things before him, Gilbert leaned back, grasping the arms of his chair as if bracing himself for an effort.

"Last year when Curtis died and it was thought well to have the post-office come up here in the centre of the town, the boys did all they could to push me for the place in spite of John Angus's opposition, and Mr. Esterbrook drew up a nicely worded account of who I was and why I should have the office, to go to Postmaster Blair by our Senator. Of course it was done the right way I suppose, with this and that claim for consideration, but I'd never known it was me it spoke of, and somehow it didn't seem quite square, for I'm nobody. So I thought I'd just send a few words to the President, explaining things, if word of such small offices ever reached him; anyway it would ease my mind. I made it short as I could: just told him that it wasn't all money need made me want the office, for I'd a trade, but I was lonesome with only the dead-and-gone people in books for company, and I wanted something to do that would keep me near to my fellow-men, without which age is souring.

"Well, Morse, in due time my appointment came and in with it, this—" carefully opening and spreading out one of the letters:—

"'Washington, April 2, 1861.

"'Mr. Oliver G. Gilbert:

"'My dear Sir:—

"'Your letter is in my hands. I have been lonely and have lived in books. I was once a postmaster