never heretofore shown any marked interest in labor except to get
as much of it for as little money as possible. If his son,
Leander, shared his father's opinions, he did not express them. In
fact he said very little, working steadily in the store all day and
appearing to have something on his mind. Most people liked
Leander.

Then came the draft and Leander was drafted. He said very little
about it, but his father said a great deal. The boy should not go;
the affair was an outrage. Leander wasn't strong, anyway; besides,
wasn't he his father's principal support? He couldn't be spared,
that's all there was about it, and he shouldn't be. There was
going to be an Exemption Board, wasn't there? All right--just wait
until he, Phineas, went before that board. He hadn't been in
politics all these years for nothin'. Sam Hunniwell hadn't got all
the pull there was in the county.

And then Captain Sam was appointed a member of that very board. He
had dropped in at the windmill shop the very evening when he
decided to accept and told Jed Winslow all about it. There never
were two people more unlike than Sam Hunniwell and Jed Winslow, but
they had been fast friends since boyhood. Jed knew that Phineas
Babbitt had been on a trip to Boston and, therefore, had not heard
of the captain's appointment. Now, according to Gabriel Bearse, he
had returned and had heard of it, and according to Bearse's excited
statement he had "gone on" about it.

"Leander's been drafted," repeated Gabe. "And that was bad enough
for Phineas, he bein' down on the war, anyhow. But he's been
cal'latin', I cal'late, to use his political pull to get Leander