Jed recognized him then.

“Well, I snum!” he exclaimed.  “Of course!  Sartin!  If it hadn’t been for you I’d have lost my life and Babbie’d have lost her clam chowder.  That carpenter feller would have had me hung for a spy in ten minutes more.  I’m real glad to see you, Colonel—­Colonel Wood.  That’s your name, if I recollect right.”

“Not exactly.  My name is Grover, and I’m not a colonel, worse luck, only a major.”

“Sho!  Grover, eh?  Now how in the nation did I get it Wood?  Oh, yes, I cal’late ‘twas mixin’ up groves and woods.  Tut, tut!  Wonder I didn’t call you ‘Pines’ or ‘Bushes’ or somethin’. . . .  But there, sit down, sit down.  I’m awful glad you dropped in.  I’d about given up hopin’ you would.”

He brought forward a chair, unceremoniously dumping two stacks of carefully sorted and counted vanes and sailors from its seat to the floor prior to doing so.  Major Grover declined to sit.

“I should like to, but I mustn’t,” he said.  “And I shouldn’t claim credit for deliberately making you a social call.  I came—­that is, I was sent here on a matter of—­er—­well, first aid to the injured.  I came to see if you would lend me a crank.”

Jed looked at him.  “A—­a what?” he asked.

“A crank, a crank for my car.  I motored over from the camp and stopped at the telegraph office.  When I came out my car refused to go; the self-starter appears to have gone on a strike.  I had left my crank at the camp and my only hope seemed to be to buy or borrow one somewhere.  I asked the two or three fellows standing about the telegraph office where I might be likely to find one.  No one seemed to know, but just then the old grouch—­excuse me, person who keeps the hardware store came along.”

“Eh?  Phin Babbitt?  Little man with the stub of a paint brush growin’ on his chin?”

“Yes, that’s the one.  I asked him where I should be likely to find a crank.  He said if I came across to this shop I ought to find one.”

“He did, eh? . . .  Hum!”

“Yes, he did.  So I came.”

“Hum!”

This observation being neither satisfying nor particularly illuminating, Major Grover waited for something more explicit.  He waited in vain; Mr. Winslow, his eyes fixed upon the toe of his visitor’s military boot, appeared to be mesmerized.

“So I came,” repeated the major, after an interval.

“Eh? . . .  Oh, yes, yes.  So you did, so you did. . . .  Hum!”

He rose and, walking to the window, peeped about the edge of the shade across and down the road in the direction of the telegraph office.

“Phineas,” he drawled, musingly, “and Squealer and Lute Small and Bluey.  Hu-u-m! . . .  Yes, yes.”

He turned away from the window and began intoning a hymn.  Major Grover seemed to be divided between a desire to laugh and a tendency toward losing patience.