"We are looking for Esquire ——'s office. A gentleman directed us a short distance back, but we find that we did not understand him."
"Whose office did you say?" inquired Nat's father, who happened to be the person addressed.
"Esquire ——'s office, the young orator we have heard so much about."
Nat's father was very much amused at this turn of matters; but he kept on a sober face, and replied, pointing to Nat, who was planing a board,
"That is the young man you want to see, I suppose."
The committee looked at each other, and then at the black-haired board-planer, with perfect amazement. Their countenances told just what they thought; and if we should write their thoughts out in plain English, they would run thus:
"What! that young fellow the stump orator of which we have been told so much. We better have staid at home, than to risk our party in his hands. Why! he is nothing but a boy. There must be some mistake about the matter."
While astonishment was evaporating from the tops of their heads, and oozing out of the ends of their fingers, Nat had turned away from the bench to welcome the official strangers. There he stood hatless, and coatless, with his shirt-sleeves stripped up to his elbows, and his noble brow wet with perspiration, looking little like one who could sway an audience by the power of his eloquence.
"We are a committee from the town of——instructed to wait on you, and engage you to address a political convention," said one of them, breaking the silence.
"When is the convention?" inquired Nat.