Between Babbitt, Senior, and Captain Sam Hunniwell, the latter
President of the Orham National Bank and also a vigorous
politician, the dislike had always been strong. Since the affair
of the postmastership it had become, on Babbitt's part, an intense
hatred. During the week just past young Babbitt's name had been
drawn as one of Orham's quota for the new National Army. The
village was still talking of the draft when the news came that
Captain Hunniwell had been selected as a member of the Exemption
Board for the district, the Board which was to hold its sessions at
Ostable and listen to the pleas of those desiring to be excused
from service. Not all of Orham knew this as yet. Jed Winslow had
heard it, from Captain Sam himself. Gabe Bearse had heard it
because he made it his business to hear everything, whether it
concerned him or not--preferably not.

The war had come to Orham with the unbelievable unreality with
which it had come to the great mass of the country. Ever since the
news of the descent of von Kluck's hordes upon devoted Belgium, in
the fall of 1914, the death grapple in Europe had, of course, been
the principal topic of discussion at the post office and around the
whist tables at the Setuckit Club, where ancient and retired
mariners met and pounded their own and each other's knees while
they expressed sulphurous opinions concerning the attitude of the
President and Congress. These opinions were, as a usual thing,
guided by the fact of their holders' allegiance to one or the other
of the great political parties. Captain Sam Hunniwell, a lifelong
and ardent Republican, with a temper as peppery as the chile con
carne upon which, when commander of a steam freighter trading with
Mexico, he had feasted so often--Captain Sam would have hoisted the
Stars and Stripes to the masthead the day the Lusitania sank and