Mr. John Sapp was free of the world. But, from that moment, Mr. Sapp had found his profession. He was, as you have seen from what he did and said to the widow, what is called a "civil servant." He had seen the color of Uncle Sam's money. It was paid in coin in those days: and Mr. Sapp knew how regular were the quarter days, and how bright the quarters and the halves. If he were prejudiced before against the meaner professions, in which one receives his pay from his fellow-men, how much more was he prejudiced against them now, when he had learned how well Uncle Sam pays, even if he pays but little, and how easy it had been for him, till this misfortune came, to do even less than he was paid for. A civil servant had Mr. John Sapp begun in life; and a civil servant he would remain. So he returned home. But he did not return before two or three "own correspondents" had announced in the "Buncombe True Eagle" and the "Bobadil True Flag" that our distinguished fellow-citizen, Mr. John Sapp, having pressed a series of reforms in the War Department which cut off the perquisites of some of the epaulette wearers who were parading on Pennsylvania Avenue, had been hunted down by them with relentless hostility, and at last had been driven from the post which he had so bravely maintained. The "Eagle" intimated that the least sop thrown to these hungry beagles by Mr. Sapp would have silenced their howl. But he was not the man to bribe. He preferred to go down with his colors flying, although the yellow flag of corruption should be flaunted in the hot sirocco of political and party tergiversation; and, with this talisman of integrity wrapped about his form, he would present himself in his native town for the verdict of the people whose rights he had maintained. In this cloud of mixed metaphor, Mr. Sapp returned to Shirk Corners, and took up his quarters at the village hotel.