“The very same, Captain.”

“And you knew me right off!  Well done for you, John!  Why, it’s all of twenty odd year since you used to set on a nail keg in my boathouse and tease me into singing the Dreadnought chanty.  I remember that.  Good land!  I ought to remember the only critter on earth that ever asked me to sing.  Ho! ho! but you was a little towheaded shaver then; and now look at you!  What are you doin’ away down here?”

John Kendrick shook his head.  “I don’t know that I’m quite sure myself, Captain,” he said.  “I have some suspicions, of course, but they may not be confirmed.  First of all I’m going over to East Wellmouth; so just excuse me a minute while I speak to the driver of the bus.”

He was hurrying away, but his companion caught his arm.

“Heave to, John!” he ordered.  “I’ve got a horse and a buggy here myself, such as they are, and unless you’re dead sot on bookin’ passage in Winnie S.’s—­what did you call it?—­bust—­I’d be mighty glad to have you make the trip along with me.  No, no.  ’Twon’t be any trouble.  Come on!”

Five minutes later they were seated in the buggy and George Washington was jogging with dignified deliberation along the road toward East Wellmouth.

“And why,” demanded Captain Obed, “have you come to Wellmouth again, after all these years?”

Mr. Kendrick smiled.

“Well, Captain Bangs,” he said, “it is barely possible that I’ve come here to stay.”

“To stay!  You don’t mean to stay for good?”

“Well, that, too, is possible.  Being more or less optimistic, we’ll hope that if I do stay it will be for good.  I’m thinking of living here.”

His companion turned around on the seat to stare at him.

“Livin’ here!” he repeated.  “You?  What on earth—?  What are you goin’ to do?”

The passenger’s eyes twinkled, but his tone was solemn enough.

“Nothing, very likely,” he replied.  “That’s what I’ve been doing for some time.”

“But—­but, the last I heard of you, you was practicin’ law over to New York.”

“So I was.  That, for a young lawyer without funds or influence, is as near doing nothing as anything I can think of.”

“But—­but, John—­”

“Just a minute, Captain.  The ‘buts’ are there, plenty of them.  Before we reach them, however, perhaps I’d better tell you the story of my life.  It isn’t exciting enough to make you nervous, but it may explain a few things.”

He told his story.  It was not the story of his life, his whole life, by any means.  The captain already knew the first part of that life.  He had known the Kendricks ever since he had known anyone.  Every person in East Wellmouth of middle age or older remembered when the two brothers, Samuel Kendrick and Bailey Kendrick—­Bailey was John’s father—­lived in the village and were the “big” men of the community.  Bailey was the more important and respected at that time,