Michael McGrath, Postmaster | Page 2

men of the Ninety-third, man by man, forced their way in the face of a thousand Sepoys, mad for blood and, with their bayonets, piled high in gory heaps the bodies of their black foes, crying with every thrust, in voices hoarse with rage and dust, "Cawnpore! Cawnpore!" That tale Ould Michael would never tell till his cups had carried him far beyond the stage of dignity and reserve.
After he had helped me to picket my ponies and pitch my tent, he led me by a little gate through his garden to the side door of the cabin.
The garden was trim, like Ould Michael himself, set out in rectangular beds, by gravel-walks and low-cut hedges of "old man." It was filled with all the dear old-fashioned flowers--Sweet William and Sweet Mary, bachelor's buttons, pansies and mignonette, old country daisies and snapdragons and lilies of the valley and, in the centre of the beds, great masses of peonies, while all around, peeping from under the hedges of old man, were poppies of every hue. Beyond the garden there was a plot of potatoes, cabbage and other vegetables and, best of all and more beautiful than all, over the whole front of the cabin, completely hiding the rough logs, ran a climbing rose, a mass of fragrant bloom. Ould Michael lingered lovingly for a moment among his flowers, and then led me into the house.
The room into which we entered was a wonder for preciseness and order. The walls were decorated with prints, much-faded photographs, stuffed birds, heads of deer and a quaint collection of old-fashioned guns, pistols and bayonets, but all arranged with an exactness and taste that would drive mad the modern artistic decorator. On one side of the window hung a picture of Wellington: on the other, that of Sir Colin. To the right of the clock, on a shelf, stood a stuffed mallard; to the left on a similar shelf, stood a stuffed owl. The same balance was diligently preserved in the arrangement of his weapons of war. A pine table stood against one wall, flanked by a home-made chair on either side. A door opened to the left into a bedroom, as I supposed; another, to the right, into what Ould Michael designated "My office, sir."
"Office?" I inquired.
"Yes, sir," still preserving his manual of ceremony, "Her Majesty's mail for Grand Bend."
"And you are the Postmaster?" I said, throwing into my voice the respect and awe that I felt were expected.
"That same," with a salute.
"That explains the flag, then; you are bound to keep that flying, I suppose."
"Bound, sir? Yes, but by no law is it."
"How, then?"
"For twenty-five years I marched and fought under that same flag," said the old soldier, dropping into his brogue, "and under it, plaze God, I'll die."
I looked at the old man. In his large dark-blue eyes shone that "fire that never slumbers"--the fire of loyal valor, with its strange power to transform common clay into men of heroic mould. The flag, the garden, the postoffice--these were Ould Michael's household gods. The equipment of the postoffice was primitive enough.
"Where are the boxes?" I inquired; "the letter-boxes, you know; to put the letters into."
"An' what wud I do puttin' them into boxes, at all?"
"Why, to distribute the mail so that you could find every man's letter when he calls for it."
"An' what would I be doin' findin' a man's letter for him? Shure an' can't he find it himself on the counter there?" pointing to a wide plank that ran along the wall.
I explained fully the ordinary system of distributing mail to him.
"Indade, 'tis a complicated system intoirely," and then he proceeded to explain his own, which he described as "simple and unpretenshus" and, sure enough, it was; for the letters were strewn upon the top of the counter, the papers and other mail-matter thrown underneath, and every man helped himself to his own.
"But might there not be mistakes?" I suggested. "A man might take his neighbor's letter."
"An' what would he do wid another man's letter forby the discooshun that might enshoo?"
I was very soon to have an opportunity of observing the working of Ould Michael's system, for next day was mailday and, in the early afternoon, men began to arrive from the neighboring valleys for their monthly mail. Ould Michael introduced me to them all with much ceremony and I could easily see that he was a personage of importance among them. Not only was he, as postmaster, the representative among them of Her Majesty's Government, but they were proud of him as standing for all that was heroic in the Empire's history; for a man who had touched shoulders with those who had fought their way under India's fierce suns and through India's swamps and jungles, from Calcutta to Lucknow and back,