Feeling the responsibility to be in capable hands and secretly glad to escape events that might be too much for his years, Captain Tanner walked back to the road, secured his package of groceries at the store, and made his way home to the widow Sprague’s house.
For five minutes Pete Ellinwood lounged indolently against a spile, engrossed in thought. Then he put on his coat and crossed the King’s Road to the Schofield cottage.
He had hardly opened the gate when a strange youth in a gray suit and Panama hat came out of the front door and down the path. Pete recognized the newcomer from St. John’s, and the newcomer evidently recognized him.
“Ha! Captain Code Schofield, I presume,” he announced, thrusting his hand nervously into his pocket and bringing out a fistful of papers. So eager and excited was he that, unnoticed, he dropped 69 one flimsy sheet, many times folded, into the grass.
“No, I’m not Schofield,” rumbled Ellinwood from the depths of his mighty chest. “Get along with you now!”
“Please accept service of this paper, Captain Schofield,” said the other, extending a legal-looking document, and shrugging his shoulders as though to say that Pete’s denial of identity was, of course, only natural, but could hardly be indulged.
“I’m not Schofield!” bellowed Pete, outraged. “My name’s Ellinwood, an’ anybody’ll tell you so. I won’t take your durned paper. If you want Schofield find him.”
The young man drew back, nonplussed, but might have continued his attentions had not a passer-by come to Pete’s rescue and sworn to his identity. Only then did the young lawyer––for he was that as well as private secretary––withdraw with short and grudged apologies.
Pete, growling to himself like a great bear, was starting forward to the house when his eye was caught by the folded paper that had dropped from the packet in the lawyer’s hand. He stooped, picked it up, and, with a glance about, to prove that the other was out of sight, opened it.
As he read it his eyes widened and his jaw dropped with astonishment. Twice he slowly spelled out the words before him, and then, with a low whistle 70 and a gigantic wink, thrust the paper carefully into his pocket and pinned the pocket.