horse already saddled hanging down a dull,
dispirited head as he awaited the mail-rider through a long, cold
interval, and bearing a United States mail-pouch, mouldy, flabby,
nearly empty. The door of the store was closed against the cold; the
blacksmith's shop was far down the road; the two or three scattered
dwellings showed no sign of life but the wreaths of blue smoke curling
up from the clay-and-stick chimneys.

Perhaps it was the impunity of the moment that suggested the idea to
Dysart's whimsical drunken fancy. He never knew. He suddenly tried the
mouth of the pouch. It was locked. Nothing daunted, a stroke of a
keen knife slit the upper part of the side seam, the sleeping baby was
slipped into the aperture, and Tank Dysart rode off chuckling with glee
to think of the dismay of the mail-rider when the mall-pouch should
break forth with squeals and quiver with kicks, which embarrassment
would probably not befall him until far away in the wilderness with his
perplexity, for there had been something stronger on that stopper than
milk or cambric tea.

As Tank went he muttered something about the security of the United
States mail, wherein he had had the forethought to deposit his Christmas
gift, and forthwith he flung himself into the shuck-pen, where he fell
asleep, and was not found till half-frozen, his whereabouts being at
last disclosed to the storekeeper by the persistent presence of his
faithful steed standing hard by. Tank was humanely cared for by this
functionary, but several days elapsed before he altogether recovered
consciousness; it was naturally a confused, disconnected train of
impressions which his mind retained. At first, in a maudlin state,
he demanded of the storekeeper, in his capacity as postmaster also, a
package, a Christmas gift, which he averred he should receive by
mail. Albeit this was esteemed merely an inebriated fancy, such is the
sensitiveness of the United States postal service on the subject of
missing mail matter that the postmaster, half-irritated, half-nervous,
detailed it to the mail-rider. "Tank 'lows ez he put it into the mail
hyar himself!"

Peter Petrie, a lowering-eyed, severe-visaged, square-jawed man, gave
Tank Dysart only a glance of ire from under his hat-brim, as if the
matter were not worth the waste of a word.

Dysart, wreck though he was, had not yet lost all conscience. He was in
an agony of remorse and doubt. It kept him sober longer than he had
been for five