Jeremy was sitting on a chair, oiling the matches, and Roger, kneeling on the pavement, was employed in beguiling the giants into biting them, when suddenly they heard the sound of galloping horses and the rattle of wheels. The lad, lowering his head still more, looked out towards the market-square through a gap between the willow-stems. “Hurrah, Mr. Jones,” he said, “here comes the mail!” Next minute, amid loud blasts from the bugle, and enveloped in a cloud of dust, the heavy cart, to the sides and seats of which the begrimed and worn-out passengers were clinging like drowning men to straws, came rattling along as fast as the six grays reserved for the last stage could gallop, and vanished towards the post-office. “There’s the mail, Ernest,” hallooed Jeremy; “she will bring the English letters.” Ernest nodded, turned a little pale, and nervously knocked out his pipe. No wonder: that mail-cart carried his destiny, and he knew it. Presently he walked across the square to the post-office. The letters were not sorted, and he was the first person there. Very soon one of his Excellency’s staff came riding down to get the Government House bag. It was the same gentleman with whom he had sung “Auld lang syne” so enthusiastically on the day of Jeremy’s encounter with the giant, and had afterwards been carted home in the wheelbarrow. “Hullo, Kershaw, here we are, ‘primos inter omnes,’ ‘primos primi primores,’ which is it? Come, Kershaw, you are the last from school—which is it? I don’t believe, you know—ha! ha! ha! What are you doing down here so soon? Does the ‘expectant swain await the postman’s knock’? Why, my dear fellow, you look pale; you must be in love or thirsty. So am I—the latter, not the former. Love, I do abjure thee. ‘Quis separabit,’ who will have a split? I think that the sun can’t be far from the line. Shall we, my dear Kershaw, _shall_ we take an observation? Ha! ha! ha!” “No, thank you, I never drink anything between meals.” “Ah! my boy, a bad habit; give it up before it is too late. Break it off, my dear Kershaw, and always wet your whistle in the strictest moderation, or you will die young. What says the poet?— ‘_He who drinks strong beer, and goes to bed mellow, Lives as he ought to live, lives as he ought to live, Lives as he ought to live, and dies a jolly good fellow._’ Byron, I think, is it not? Ha! ha! ha!” Just then some others came up, and, somewhat to Ernest’s relief, his friend turned the light of his kindly countenance to shine elsewhere, and left him to his thoughts.