'Oh, I know you have feelings, Loyd; but you must not be more nice than wise. They _must not_ get the start of us. I always told my wife it would be so, and now she sees I was right. I tell you, Loyd, in confidence, your honored father was not cold, before Lyman Barton was handing round his petition for the office.' It was not in human nature for the old lady to suppress an a-hem! at this exact fulfilment of her prediction to the poor colonel. 'Barton's petition,' continued Perrit, 'will go on to Washington in the mail to-morrow, and ours _must_ go with it; here it is.' He took the paper from his pocket, and, opening it, showed a long list of names. 'A heavy list,' he added; 'but every one of them whigs; we did not ask a Jackson man; there would have been no use, you know; Lyman Barton leads them all by the nose.' Here Perrit was interrupted by a knock at the entry door. A packet addressed to Loyd was handed to him. Perrit glanced at the superscription, and exclaimed, 'This is too much, by George! He has had the impudence to send you the petition.' 'I could not have believed this of him,' thought Loyd, as he broke the seal; for he, like his father, reluctantly believed ill of any one. There were a few lines on the envelope; he read them to himself, and then, with that emotion which a good man feels at an unexpected good deed, he read them aloud: 'MY DEAR FRIEND LOYD: 'Excuse me for intruding on you, at this early moment, a business matter that ought not to be deferred. You will see by the enclosed, that my friends and myself have done what we could to testify our respect for the memory of your excellent father, and our esteem for you. Wishing you the success you deserve, 'I remain very truly yours, 'LYMAN BARTON.' The enclosed paper was a petition, headed by _Lyman Barton_, and signed by almost every Jackson partisan in the town, that the office of post-master might be given to Loyd Barnard. A short prefix to the petition expressed the signers' respect for the colonel, and their unqualified confidence in his son. Perrit ran his eye over the list, and exclaiming, 'This is the Lord's hand! by George!' he seized his hat and departed, eager to have at least the consolation of first spreading the news through the village. Few persons comprehend a degree of virtue beyond that of which they are themselves capable. 'It is, indeed, in one sense,' said Loyd, as the door closed after Perrit, 'the hand of the Lord; for He it is that makes his creatures capable of such disinterested goodness.' Those who heard the fervid language and tone in which Loyd expressed his gratitude, when he that night, for the first time, took his father's place at the family altar, must have felt that this was one of the few cases where it was _equally_ 'blessed to give and to receive.'