be mistakes?" I suggested. "A man might take his neighbor's letter."

"An' what would he do wid another man's letter forby the discooshun that might enshoo?"

I was very soon to have an opportunity of observing the working of Ould Michael's system, for next day was mailday and, in the early afternoon, men began to arrive from the neighboring valleys for their monthly mail. Ould Michael introduced me to them all with much ceremony and I could easily see that he was a personage of importance among them. Not only was he, as postmaster, the representative among them of Her Majesty's Government, but they were proud of him as standing[Pg 10] for all that was heroic in the Empire's history; for a man who had touched shoulders with those who had fought their way under India's fierce suns and through India's swamps and jungles, from Calcutta to Lucknow and back, was no common citizen, but a man who trailed glory in his wake. More than this, Ould Michael was a friend to all, and they loved him for his simple, generous heart. Too generous, as it turned out, for every month it was his custom to summon his friends to Paddy Dougan's bar and spend the greater part of the monthly remittance that came in his letter from home. That monthly letter should be placed in the category of household gods with the flag, the garden and the postoffice. Its arrival was always an occasion for celebration—not for the remittance it contained, but for the wealth of love and tender memory it brought to Ould Michael in this far-off land.

Late in the afternoon, just before the arrival of the mail-stage, there rode up the bench towards the postoffice a man remarkable even in that company of remarkable men. He was tall—a good deal over six feet—spare, bony, with huge hands and feet and evidently possessed of immense strength. His face and head were covered with a ma