Jed wiped the surplus paint from his brush on the edge of the can.

“To sellin’ hardware,” he concluded, gravely, but with a twinkle in his eye.

Captain Sam sniffed, perhaps in disappointment.  “His hardware’d melt where I’d tell him to go,” he declared.  “What you say is all right, Ed. It’s an easy doctrine to preach, but, like lots of other preacher’s doctrines, it’s hard to live up to.  Phin loves me like a step-brother and I love him the same way.  Well, now here he comes to ask me to do a favor for him.  If I don’t do it, he’ll say, and the whole town’ll say, that I’m ventin’ my spite on him, keepin’ on with my grudge, bein’ nasty, cussed, everything that’s mean.  If I do do it, if I let Leander off, all hands’ll say that I did it because I was afraid of Phineas and the rest would say the other thing.  It puts me in a devil of a position.  It’s all right to say, ‘Do your duty,’ ‘Stand up in your shoes,’ ’Do what you think’s right, never mind whose boy ‘tis,’ and all that, but I wouldn’t have that old skunk goin’ around sayin’ I took advantage of my position to rob him of his son for anything on earth.  I despise him too much to give him that much satisfaction.  And yet there I am, and the case’ll come up afore me.  What’ll I do, Jed?  Shall I resign?  Help me out.  I’m about crazy.  Shall I heave up the job?  Shall I quit?”

Jed put down the brush and the sailor man.  He rubbed his chin.

“No-o,” he drawled, after a moment.

“Oh, I shan’t, eh?  Why not?”

“’Cause you don’t know how, Sam.  It always seemed to me that it took a lot of practice to be a quitter.  You never practiced.”

“Thanks.  All right, then, I’m to hang on, I suppose, and take my medicine.  If that’s all the advice you’ve got to give me, I might as well have stayed at home.  But I tell you this, Jed Winslow:  If I’d realized—­if I’d thought about the Leander Babbitt case comin’ up afore me on that Board I never would have accepted the appointment.  When you and I were talkin’ here the other night it’s queer that neither of us thought of it. . . .  Eh?  What are you lookin at me like that for?  You don’t mean to tell me that you did think of it?  Did you?”

Winslow nodded.

“Yes,” he said.  “I thought of it.”

“You did!  Well, I swear!  Then why in thunder didn’t you—­”

He was interrupted.  The bell attached to the door of the outer shop rang.  The maker of windmills rose jerkily to his feet.  Captain Sam made a gesture of impatience.

“Get rid of your customer and come back here soon as you can,” he ordered.  Having commanded a steamer before he left the sea and become a banker, the captain usually ordered rather than requested.  “Hurry all you can.  I ain’t half through talkin’ with you.  For the land sakes, move!  Of all the deliberate, slow travelin’—­”

He did not finish his sentence, nor did Winslow, who had started toward the door, have time to reach it.  The door was opened and a short, thickset man, with a leathery face and a bristling yellow-white chin beard, burst into the room.  At the sight of its occupants he uttered a grunt of satisfaction and his bushy brows were drawn together above his little eyes, the latter a washed-out gray and set very close together.