he exclaimed. "Well, I don't mind your meetin' yourself. I
thought first you'd gone off your head, blessed if I didn't.
You're a queer critter, Jed. Get those funny notions from readin'
so many books, I guess likely. Meetin' yourself! What an idea
that is! I suppose you mean that, bein' alone in that house where
you've lived since you was born, you naturally get to thinkin'
about what used to be."

Jed stared wistfully at the back of a chair.

"Um-hm," he murmured, "and what might have been--and--and ain't."

The captain nodded. Of all the people in Orham he, he prided
himself, was the only one who thoroughly understood Jed Winslow.
And sometimes he did partially understand him; this was one of the
times.

"Now--now--now," he said, hastily, "don't you get to frettin'
yourself about your not amountin' to anything and all that. You've
got a nice little trade of your own buildin' up here. What more do
you want? We can't all be--er--Know-it-alls like Shakespeare, or--
or rich as Standard Oil Companies, can we? Look here, what do you
waste your time goin' back twenty-five years and meetin' yourself
for? Why don't you look ahead ten or fifteen and try to meet
yourself then? You may be a millionaire, a--er--windmill trust or
somethin' of that kind, by that time. Eh? Ha, ha!"

Jed rubbed his chin.

"When I meet myself lookin' like a millionaire," he observed,
gravely, "I'll have to do the way you do at your bank, Sam--call in
somebody to identify me."

Captain Sam laughed. "Well, anyhow," he said, "don't talk any more
foolishness about not livin' in your own house. If I was you--"

Mr. Winslow interrupted. "Sam," he said, "the way to find out what
you would do if you was me is to make sure WHAT you'd do--and then
do t'other thing, or somethin' worse."

"Oh, Jed, be reasonable."

Jed looked over his spectacles. "Sam," he drawled, "if I was
reasonable I wouldn't be me."

And he lived no longer in the old house. Having made up his mind,
he built a small two-room addition to his workshop and lived in
that. Later he added a sleeping room--a sort of loft--and a little
covered porch on the side toward the sea. Here, in pleasant summer
twilights or on moonlight nights, he sat and smoked. He had a good
many callers and but few real friends. Most of the townspeople
liked him, but almost all considered him a joke, an oddity, a
specimen to be pointed out to those of the summer people who were
looking