after several conversations which he had held with his friend Matt
Pike.

Mr. Matt Pike was a bachelor of some thirty summers, a foretime clerk
consecutively in each of the two stores of the village, but latterly a
trader on a limited scale in horses, wagons, cows, and similar objects
of commerce, and at all times a politician. His hopes of holding
office had been continually disappointed until Mr. John Sanks became
sheriff, and rewarded with a deputyship some important special service
rendered by him in the late very close canvass. Now was a chance to
rise, Mr. Pike thought. All he wanted, he had often said, was a start.
Politics, I would remark, however, had been regarded by Mr. Pike as a
means rather than an end. It is doubtful if he hoped to become
governor of the state, at least before an advanced period in his
career. His main object now was to get money, and he believed that
official position would promote him in the line of his ambition faster
than was possible to any private station, by leading him into more
extensive acquaintance with mankind, their needs, their desires, and
their caprices. A deputy sheriff, provided that lawyers were not too
indulgent in allowing acknowledgment of service of court processes, in
postponing levies and sales, and in settlement of litigated cases,
might pick up three hundred dollars, a good sum for those times, a
fact which Mr. Pike had known and pondered long.

It happened just about then that the arrears of rent for the village
hotel had so accumulated on Mr. Spouter, the last occupant, that the
owner, an indulgent man, finally had said, what he had been expected
for years and years to say, that he could not wait on Mr. Spouter
forever and eternally. It was at this very nick, so to speak, that Mr.
Pike made to Mr. Fluker the suggestion to quit a business so far