up my own plans and--
and hopes, do you mean? Oh, my Lord above! Ain't I been givin'
'em up and givin' 'em up all my lifelong? When I was a boy didn't
I give up the education that might have made me a--a MAN instead
of--of a town laughin' stock? While Mother lived was I doin' much
but give up myself for her? I ain't sayin' 'twas any more'n right
that I should, but I did it, didn't I? And ever since it's been
the same way. I tell you, I've come to believe that life for me
means one 'give up' after the other and won't mean anything but
that till I die. And you--you ask me what I know about it! YOU
do!"

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