d to him, of course; but gossip--particularly the Bearse
brand of gossip--was not the most reliable of evidence. Then he
remembered his own recent conversation with Leander and the
latter's expressed fear that his father might get into trouble.
Jed determined, for the son's sake, not to bring that trouble
nearer.

"Well, Major," he answered, "I shouldn't want to say that he was.
Phineas talks awful foolish sometimes, but I shouldn't wonder if
that was his hot head and bull temper as much as anything else. As
to whether he's anything more than foolish or not, course I
couldn't say sartin, but I don't think he's too desperate to be
runnin' loose. I cal'late he won't put any bombs underneath the
town hall or anything of that sort. Phin and his kind remind me
some of that new kind of balloon you was tellin' me they'd probably
have over to your camp when 'twas done, that--er--er--dirigible;
wasn't that what you called it?"

"Yes. But why does Babbitt remind you of a dirigible balloon? I
don't see the connection."

"Don't you? Well, seems's if I did. Phin fills himself up with
the gas he gets from his Anarchist papers and magazines--the 'rich
man's war' and all the rest of it--and goes up in the air and when
he's up in the air he's kind of hard to handle. That's what you
told me about the balloon, if I recollect."

Grover laughed heartily. "Then the best thing to do is to keep him
on the ground, I should say," he observed.

Jed rubbed his chin. "Um-hm," he drawled, "but shuttin' off his
gas supply might help some. I don't think I'd worry about him
much, if I was you."

They separated at the front gate before the shop, where the rows of
empty posts, from which the mills and vanes had all been removed,
stood as gaunt reminders of the vanished summer. Major Grover
refused Jed's invitation to come in and have a smoke.

"No, thank you," he said, "not this evening. I'll wait here a
moment and say good-night to the Armstrongs and Phillips and then I
must be on my way to the camp. . . . Why, what's the matter?
Anything wrong?"

His companion was searching in his various pockets. The search
completed, he proceeded to look himself over, so to speak, taking
off his hat and looking at that, lifting a hand and then a foot and
looking at them, and all with a puzzled, far-away expression. When
Grover repeated his question he seemed to hear it for the first
time and then not very clearly.

"Eh?" he drawled. "O