t longer, his gaze apparently fixed upon
a point in the middle of the white plastered ceiling. Then he
said, dreamily: "Well, anyhow, 'twon't be but a month. They'll go
somewheres else in a month."

Captain Sam sniffed. "Bet you a dollar they won't," he retorted.
"Not unless you turn 'em out. And I see you turnin' anybody out."

But Mr. Winslow looked hopeful. "They'll go when the month's up,"
he reiterated. "Nobody could stand me more than a month. Mother
used to say so, and she'd known me longer than anybody."

And so, in this curious fashion, did tenants come to the old
Winslow house. They moved in on the following Monday. Jed saw the
wagon with the trunks backing up to the door and he sighed. Then
he went over to help carry the trunks into the house.

For the first week he found the situation rather uncomfortable; not
as uncomfortable as he had feared, but a trifle embarrassing,
nevertheless. His new neighbors were not too neighborly; they did
not do what he would have termed "pester" him by running in and out
of the shop at all hours, nor did they continually ask favors. On
the other hand they did not, like his former tenants, the
Davidsons, treat him as if he were some sort of odd wooden image,
like one of his own weather vanes, a creature without feelings, to
be displayed and "shown off" when it pleased them and ignored when
it did not. Mrs. Armstrong was always quietly cheerful and
friendly when they met in the yard or about the premises, but she
neither intruded nor patronized. Jed's first impression of her, a
favorable one, was strengthened daily.

"I like her first-rate," he told Captain Sam. "She ain't too
folksy and she ain't too standoffish. Why, honest truth, Sam," he
added, ingenuously, "she treats me just the same as if I was like
the common run of folks."

The captain snorted. "Gracious king! Do stop runnin' yourself
down," he commanded. "Suppose you are a little mite--er--different
from the--well, from the heft of mackerel in the keg, what of it?
That's your own private business, ain't it?"

Jed's lip twitched. "I suppose 'tis," he drawled. "If it wan't
there wouldn't be so many folks interested in it."

At first he missed the freedom to which he had accustomed himself
during his years of solitude, the liberty of preparing for bed with
the doors and windows toward the sea wide open and the shades not
drawn; of strolling out to the well at unearthly hours of the early
mo