As the captain was turning to go he asked his friend a question.

“Jed,” he asked, “what in the world have you taken your front gate off the hinges for?”

Jed, who had been gazing dreamily out to sea for the past few minutes, started and came to life.

“Eh?” he queried.  “Did—­did you speak, Sam?”

“Yes, but you haven’t yet.  I asked you what you took your front gate off the hinges for.”

“Oh, I didn’t.  I took the hinges off the gate.”

“Well, it amounts to the same thing.  The gate’s standin’ up alongside the fence.  What did you do it for?”

Jed sighed.  “It squeaked like time,” he drawled, “and I had to stop it.”

“So you took the hinges off?  Gracious king!  Why didn’t you ile ’em so they wouldn’t squeak?”

“Eh? . . .  Oh, I did set out to, but I couldn’t find the ile can.  The only thing I could find was the screwdriver and at last I came to the conclusion the Almighty must have meant me to use it; so I did.  Anyhow, it stopped the squeakin’.”

Captain Sam roared delightedly.  “That’s fine,” he declared.  “It does me good to have you act that way.  You haven’t done anything so crazy as that for the last six months.  I believe the old Jed Winslow’s come back again.  That’s fine.”

Jed smiled his slow smile.  “I’m stickin’ to my job, Sam,” he said.

“And grinnin’.  Don’t forget to grin, Jed.”

“W-e-e-ll, when I stick to my job, Sam, ’most everybody grins.”

Babbie accompanied the captain to the place where the gate had been.  Jed, left alone, hummed a hymn.  The door of the little house next door opened and Ruth came out into the yard.

“Where is Babbie?” she asked.

“She’s just gone as far as the sidewalk with Cap’n Sam Hunniwell,” was Jed’s reply.  “She’s all right.  Don’t worry about her.”

Ruth laughed lightly.  “I don’t,” she said.  “I know she is all right when she is with you, Jed.”

Babbie came dancing back.  Somewhere in a distant part of the village a dog was howling dismally.

“What makes that dog bark that way, Uncle Jed?” asked Babbie.

Jed was watching Ruth, who had walked to the edge of the bluff and was looking off over the water, her delicate face and slender figure silver-edged by the moonlight.

“Eh? . . .  That dog?” he repeated.  “Oh, he’s barkin’ at the moon, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“At the moon?  Why does he bark at the moon?”

“Oh, he thinks he wants it, I cal’late.  Wants it to eat or play with or somethin’.  Dogs get funny notions, sometimes.”

Babbie laughed.  “I, think he’s awf’ly silly,” she said.  “He couldn’t have the moon, you know, could he?  The moon wasn’t made for a dog.”

Jed, still gazing at Ruth, drew a long breath.

“That’s right,” he admitted.

The child listened to the lugubrious canine wails for a moment; then she said thoughtfully:  “I feel kind of sorry for this poor dog, though.  He sounds as if he wanted the moon just dreadf’ly.”