“Is it?  Sho, so ’tis!  Now that proves the instinct of dumb animals, don’t it?  That lead-pencil knew enough to realize that my ear was so big that anything short of a cord-wood stick could hide behind it.  Tut, tut!  Surprisin’, surprisin’!”

“But, Uncle Jed, a pencil isn’t an animal.”

“Eh?  Ain’t it?  Seemed to me I’d read somethin’ about the ragin’ lead-pencil seekin’ whom it might devour.  But maybe that was a—­ er—­lion or a clam or somethin’.”

Babbie looked at him in puzzled fashion for a moment.  Then she sagely shook her head and declared:  “Uncle Jed, I think you are perfectly scru-she-aking.  Petunia and I are convulshed.  We—­” she stopped, listened, and then announced:  “Uncle Jed, I think somebody came up the walk.”

The thought received confirmation immediately in the form of a knock at the door.  Jed looked over his spectacles.

“Hum,” he mused, sadly, “there’s no peace for the wicked, Babbie.  No sooner get one order all fixed and out of the way than along comes a customer and you have to get another one ready.  If I’d known ‘twas goin’ to be like this I’d never have gone into business, would you?  But maybe ’tain’t a customer, maybe it’s Cap’n Sam or Gabe Bearse or somebody. . . .  They wouldn’t knock, though, ’tain’t likely; anyhow Gabe wouldn’t. . . .  Come in,” he called, as the knock was repeated.

The person who entered the shop was a tall man in uniform.  The afternoon was cloudy and the outer shop, piled high with stock and lumber, was shadowy.  The man in uniform looked at Jed and Barbara and they looked at him.  He spoke first.

“Pardon me,” he said, “but is your name Winslow?”

Jed nodded.  “Yes, sir,” he replied, deliberately.  “I guess likely ’tis.”

“I have come here to see if you could let me have—­”

Babbie interrupted him.  Forgetting her manners in the excitement of the discovery which had just flashed upon her, she uttered an exclamation.

“Oh, Uncle Jed!” she exclaimed.

Jed, startled, turned toward her.

“Yes?” he asked, hastily.  “What’s the matter?”

“Don’t you know?  He—­he’s the nice officer one.”

“Eh?  The nice what?  What are you talkin’ about, Babbie?”

Babbie, now somewhat abashed and ashamed of her involuntary outburst, turned red and hesitated.

“I mean,” she stammered, “I mean he—­he’s the—­officer one that—­ that was nice to us that day.”

“That day?  What day? . . .  Just excuse the little girl, won’t you?” he added, apologetically, turning to the caller.  “She’s made a mistake; she thinks she knows you, I guess.”

“But I do, Uncle Jed.  Don’t you remember?  Over at the flying place?”

The officer himself took a step forward.

“Why, of course,” he said, pleasantly.  “She is quite right.  I thought your faces were familiar.  You and she were over at the camp that day when one of our construction plans was lost.  She found it for us.  And Lieutenant Rayburn and I have been grateful many times since,” he added.