“He’s all kinds.  One of his notions is that he won’t pay bills by check, if he can possibly help it.  He’ll travel fifty miles to pay money for a thing sooner than send a check for it.  He had this note—­fourteen hundred dollars ‘twas—­comin’ due at our bank to-day and he’d sent word if we wanted the cash we must send for it ’cause his lumbago was too bad for him to travel.  I wanted to see him anyhow, about a little matter of a political appointment up his way, so I decided to take the car and go myself.  Well, I’ve just got back and I had a windy v’yage, too.  And cold, don’t talk!”

“Um . . . yes. . . .  Get your money, did you?”

“Yes, I got it.  It’s in my overcoat pocket now.  I thought one spell I wasn’t goin’ to get it, for the old feller was mad about some one of his cranberry buyers failin’ up on him and he was as cross-grained as a scrub oak root.  He and I had a regular row over the matter of politics I went there to see him about ’special.  I told him what he was and he told me where I could go.  That’s how we parted.  Then I came home.”

“Hum. . . .  You’d have had a warmer trip if you’d gone where he sent you, I presume likely. . . .  Um. . . .  Yes, yes. . . .

     ’There’s a place in this chorus
        For you and for me,
      And the theme of it ever
        And always shall be: 
      Hallelujah, ’tis do-ne! 
        I believe. . . .’

Hum! . . .  I thought that paint can was full and there ain’t more’n a half pint in it.  I must have drunk it in my sleep, I guess.  Do I look green around the mouth, Sam?”

It was just before Captain Sam’s departure that he spoke of his daughter and young Phillips.  He mentioned them in a most casual fashion, as he was putting on his coat to go, but Jed had a feeling that his friend had stopped at the windmill shop on purpose to discuss that very subject and that all the detail of his Wapatomac trip had been in the nature of a subterfuge to conceal this fact.

“Oh,” said the captain, with somewhat elaborate carelessness, as he struggled into the heavy coat, “I don’t know as I told you that the directors voted to raise Charlie’s salary.  Um-hm, at last Saturday’s meetin’ they did it.  ’Twas unanimous, too.  He’s as smart as a whip, that young chap.  We all think a heap of him.”

Jed nodded, but made no comment.  The captain fidgeted with a button of his coat.  He turned toward the door, stopped, cleared his throat, hesitated, and then turned back again.

“Jed,” he said, “has—­has it seemed to you that—­that he—­that Charlie was—­maybe—­comin’ to think consider’ble of—­of my daughter—­of Maud?”

Jed looked up, caught his eye, and looked down again.  Captain Sam sighed.

“I see,” he said.  “You don’t need to answer.  I presume likely the whole town has been talkin’ about it for land knows how long.  It’s generally the folks at home that don’t notice till the last gun fires.  Of course I knew he was comin’ to the house a good deal and that he and Maud seemed to like each other’s society, and all that.  But it never struck me that—­that it meant anything serious, you know—­anything—­anything—­well, you know what I mean, Jed.”