Jed nodded, gravely.  “You bet it’s somethin’,” he argued.  “It’s a lot, a whole lot.  I only wish I was standin’ alongside of you in the ranks, Leander. . . .  I’d be a sight, though, wouldn’t I?” he added, his lip twitching in the fleeting smile.  “What do you think the Commodore, or General, or whoever ’tis bosses things at the camp, would say when he saw me?  He’d think the flagpole had grown feet, and was walkin’ round, I cal’late.”

He asked his young friend what reception he met with upon his return home.  Leander smiled ruefully.

“My step-mother seemed glad enough to see me,” he said.  “She and I had some long talks on the subject and I think she doesn’t blame me much for going into the service.  I told her the whole story and, down in her heart, I believe she thinks I did right.”

Jed nodded.  “Don’t see how she could help it,” he said.  “How does your dad take it?”

Leander hesitated.  “Well,” he said, “you know Father.  He doesn’t change his mind easily.  He and I didn’t get as close together as I wish we could.  And it wasn’t my fault that we didn’t,” he added, earnestly.

Jed understood.  He had known Phineas Babbitt for many years and he knew the little man’s hard, implacable disposition and the violence of his prejudices.

“Um-hm,” he said.  “All the same, Leander, I believe your father thinks more of you than he does of anything else on earth.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if you was right, Jed.  But on the other hand I’m afraid he and I will never be the same after I come back from the war—­always providing I do come back, of course.”

“Sshh, sshh!  Don’t talk that way.  Course you’ll come back.”

“You never can tell.  However, if I knew I wasn’t going to, it wouldn’t make any difference in my feelings about going.  I’m glad I enlisted and I’m mighty thankful to you for backing me up in it.  I shan’t forget it, Jed.”

“Sho, sho!  It’s easy to tell other folks what to do.  That’s how the Kaiser earns his salary; only he gives advice to the Almighty, and I ain’t got as far along as that yet.”

They discussed the war in general and by sections.  Just before he left, young Babbitt said: 

“Jed, there is one thing that worries me a little in connection with Father.  He was bitter against the war before we went into it and before he and Cap’n Sam Hunniwell had their string of rows.  Since then and since I enlisted he has been worse than ever.  The things he says against the government and against the country make me want to lick him—­and I’m his own son.  I am really scared for fear he’ll get himself jailed for being a traitor or something of that sort.”

Mr. Winslow asked if Phineas’ feeling against Captain Hunniwell had softened at all.  Leander’s reply was a vigorous negative.

“Not a bit,” he declared.  “He hates the cap’n worse than ever, if that’s possible, and he’ll do him some bad turn some day, if he can, I’m afraid.  You must think it’s queer my speaking this way of my own father,” he added.  “Well, I don’t to any one else.  Somehow a fellow always feels as if he could say just what he thinks to you, Jed Winslow.  I feel that way, anyhow.”