"I don't suppose any of you understand why I am going away, but I'll try to tell you. I have been dismissed by your fathers and mothers. I haven't been a good teacher, they say; I have allowed you too much freedom. I have taken you out sketching and fishing and playing; I have let you read what you liked, let you do what you liked. I haven't taught you enough. How many of you know the capital of Bolivia? You see, not one of you knows." "Please, sir, what is it?" asked Jim Jackson. "I don't know myself, Jim." My pipe had gone out and I lit it again. "Bairns, I don't want to leave you all; you are mine, you know, and the school is ours. You and I made the gardens and rockeries; we dug the pond and we caught the trout and minnows and planted the water-plants. We built the pigeon-loft and the rabbit-hutch. We fed our pets together. We----" I don't know what happened after that. I took out my handkerchief, but not to blow my nose. "The bugle," I managed to say, and someone shoved it into my hand. Then I played "There's No Parade To-day," but I don't think I played it very well. Only a few went outside; most of them sat and looked at me. "I must get Jim to save the situation," I said to myself, and I shouted his name. "P-please, sir," lisped Maggie Clark, "Jim's standin' oot in the porch." "Tell him to come in," I commanded. Maggie went out; then she returned slowly. "P-please, sir, he's standin' greetin' and he winna come." "Damnation!" I cried, and I bustled them from the room. A quarter-past six! It's time Jim came for these boxes. * * * I am back in my old rooms in a small street off Hammersmith Broadway. My landlady, Mrs. Lewis, is a lady of delightful garrulity, and her comments on things to-day have served to cheer me up. She is intensely interested in the fact that I have come from Scotland, and anxious to give me all the news of events that have happened during my sojourn in the wilds. "Did you 'ear much abaht the war in Scotland?" she said. I looked my surprise. "War! What war?" Then she explained that Britain and France and Russia and the Allies were fighting against Germany. "Now that I come to think of it," I said reflectively, "I _did_ see a lot of khaki about to-day." "Down't you get the pypers in Scotland?" she asked. "Thousands of them, Mrs. Lewis; why, every Scot plays the pipes." "I mean the pypers, not the pypers," she explained. "Oh, I see! We do get a few; English travellers leave them in the trains, you know." She thought for a little. "It must be nice livin' in a plyce w'ere everyone knows everyone else. My sister Sally's married to a pynter in Dundee, Peter Macnab; do you know 'im?"