And yet, so far as he himself was concerned, Young Denny Bolton was totally oblivious, or at least apparently so, to the very audible hum of astonishment which ripped along behind them when they--he and Judge Maynard of all men--whirled down the main street of the village that morning through the gray mist already heavy as fine rain, to stop with a great flourish of glittering harness buckles and stamping of hoofs before the post-office doors. It was the busiest hour which the straggling one-story shops along the unpaved thoroughfare knew, this one directly following the unshuttering of the specked, unwashed show-windows, known distinctly as "mail time"--a very certain instant when Old Jerry's measured passage from the office doors to his dilapidated rig at the edge of the boardwalk heralded the opening of the general delivery window within. It was Old Jerry's hour--the one hour of the day in which his starved appetite for notoriety ever supped of nourishment--that moment when the small knot of loiterers upon the sidewalk, always, face for face, composed of the same personnel as the unvarying nightly circle about the Tavern stove, gave way before him and the authority of the "Gov'mint" which he personified. Since that first morning, years back, which had hailed his initial appearance with the mail bags slung over one thin shoulder, he had made the most of that daily entrance upon the stage of publicity. There was always a haughty aloofness in his eyes that killed any word of greeting upon the lips of these same beholders with whom, a few hours later, he was to sit and wrangle in bitterest intimacy; a certain brisk importance of step which was a palpable rebuke to their purposeless unemployment. Just once this haughty reserve had been assailed. It happened that same first morning when Old Dave Shepard, white of head and womanishly mild of voice, alike the circle's patriarch and most timid member, had stepped forward and laid one unsteady hand upon his arm, some embarrassed word of congratulation trembling on his lips. Old Jerry's bearing upon that one occasion had precluded for all time the possibility of its recurrence. He had stepped back a pace, out of reach of those detaining fingers, and fastened the offender with a stare of such baleful resentment that the latter drew off in pitiful haste for self-effacement. And Jerry's words on that one occasion were still current history. "I warn you, Mister Shepard," he had shrilled, "that it's a state's prison offense to interfere with a Gov'mint official in the performance of his duty--and if you've got any complaints to make they'll have to be set down reg'lar in writin', so's I can give 'em due consideration!"