Captain Sam was so taken aback that he was almost speechless.  In all his long acquaintance with Jed Winslow he had never seen him like this.

“Why—­why, Jed!” he stammered.  But Jed was not listening.  He strode across the room and seized his visitor by the arm.

“You go home, Sam Hunniwell,” he ordered.  “Go home and think—­ think, I tell you.  All your life you’ve had just what I haven’t.  You married the girl you wanted and you and she were happy together.  You’ve been looked up to and respected here in Orham; folks never laughed at you or called you ‘town crank.’  You’ve got a daughter and she’s a good girl.  And the man she wants to marry is a good man, and, if you’ll give him a chance and he lives through the war he’s goin’ into, he’ll make you proud of him.  You go home, Sam Hunniwell!  Go home, and thank God you’re what you are and as you are. . . .  No, I won’t talk!  I don’t want to talk! . . .  Go home.”

He had been dragging his friend to the door.  Now he actually pushed him across the threshold and slammed the door between them.

“Well, for . . . the Lord . . . sakes!” exclaimed Captain Hunniwell.

The scraping of the key in the lock was his only answer.

CHAPTER XXI

A child spends time and thought and energy upon the building of a house of blocks.  By the time it is nearing completion it has become to him a very real edifice.  Therefore, when it collapses into an ungraceful heap upon the floor it is poor consolation to be reminded that, after all, it was merely a block house and couldn’t be expected to stand.

Jed, in his own child-like fashion, had reared his moonshine castle beam by beam.  At first he had regarded it as moonshine and had refused to consider the building of it anything but a dangerously pleasant pastime.  And then, little by little, as his dreams changed to hopes, it had become more and more real, until, just before the end, it was the foundation upon which his future was to rest.  And down it came, and there was his future buried in the ruins.

And it had been all moonshine from the very first.  Jed, sitting there alone in his little living-room, could see now that it had been nothing but that.  Ruth Armstrong, young, charming, cultured—­ could she have thought of linking her life with that of Jedidah Edgar Wilfred Winslow, forty-five, “town crank” and builder of windmills?  Of course not—­and again of course not.  Obviously she never had thought of such a thing.  She had been grateful, that was all; perhaps she had pitied him just a little and behind her expressions of kindliness and friendship was pity and little else.  Moonshine—­moonshine—­moonshine.  And, oh, what a fool he had been!  What a poor, silly fool!