This man, connected, though secretly, with Rivers and Munro, was indebted to them and the votes which in that region they could throw into the boxes, for his elevation to the office which he held, and was, as might reasonably have been expected, a mere creature under their management. Maxson, of late days, however, whether from a reasonable apprehension, increasing duly with increasing years, that he might become at last so involved in the meshes of those crimes of his colleagues, from which, while he was compelled to share the risk, he was denied in great part the profit, had grown scrupulous--had avoided as much as possible their connexion; and, the better to strengthen himself in the increasing favor of public opinion, had taken advantage of all those externals of morality and virtue which, unhappily, too frequently conceal qualities at deadly hostility with them. He had, in the popular phrase of the country, "got religion;" and, like the worthy reformers of the Cromwell era, everything which he did, and everything which he said, had Scripture for its authority. Psalm-singing commenced and ended the day in his house, and graces before meat and graces before sleep, prayers and ablutions, thanksgivings and fastings, had so much thinned the animal necessities of his household, that a domestic war was the consequence, and the sheriff and the sheriff's lady held separate sway, having equally divided the dwelling between them, and ruling each their respective sovereignties with a most jealous watchfulness. All rights, not expressly delegated in the distribution of powers originally, were insisted on even to blood; and the arbitration of the sword, or rather the poker, once appealed to, most emphatically, by the sovereign of the gentler sex, had cut off the euphonious utterance of one of the choicest paraphrases of Sternhold and Hopkins in the middle; and by bruising the scull of the reformed and reforming sheriff, had nearly rendered a new election necessary to the repose and well-being of the county in which they lived. But the worthy convert recovered, to the sore discomfiture of his spouse, and to the comfort and rejoicing of all true believers. The breach in his head was healed, but that which separated his family remained the same-- "As rocks that had been rent asunder." They knew the fellowship of man and wife only in so much as was absolutely essential to the keeping up of appearances to the public eye--a matter necessary to maintaining her lord in the possession of his dignity; which, as it conferred honor and profit, through him, upon her also, it was of necessity a part of her policy to continue.