"He'll resign out o' the meeser-r-rable pother," growled Mac Tavish. "The word he just gied the gillies! It was as much as to say, 'I'll be coomin' along wi' ye from noo on.'" The old man's hankerings were helping his persistent hope, in spite of his respect for the Morrison trait of devotion to duty. "Resign, Andy! Confound it, he's only nailing his grit to the mast and planning on what end of the row to tackle first. You'll see!" Stewart walked slowly, meditating deeply, went through the opening in the rail, sat down at his desk and fumbled in a drawer and sought deeply under many papers. He brought out a book, a worn volume. Calvin Dow, daring to peer more closely than Miss Bunker or Mac Tavish had the courage to venture, noted that the place to which Morrison opened was marked by a slip of paper, a snapshot photograph. "Miss Bunker!" called the master. "A memo.!" She came with her note-book and sat at the lid of the desk, facing him. "His resignation, I tell ye," whispered Mac Tavish. "I ken the look o' detar-rmination!" "I want it typed on a narrow strip that I can slip into my pocketbook," stated Stewart. Then, to all appearances entirely unconcerned with the listening veterans, he dictated: "Meanwhile I was thinking of my first love, As I had not been thinking of aught for years. Till over my eyes there began to move Something that felt like tears." Mac Tavish bent on Dow a wild look and swapped with the old pensioner of the Morrisons a stare of amazement for one of bewildered concern. "I thought of the dress that she wore last time When we stood 'neath the cypress-tree together In that lost land, in that soft clime, In the crimson evening weather. "Of that muslin dress (for the eve was hot) And her warm white neck in its golden chain, And her full, soft hair, just tied in a knot, And falling loose again. "I thought of our little quarrels and strife, And the letter that brought me back my ring. And it all seemed then, in the waste of life, Such a very little thing." The girl dabbed up her hand under pretense of fixing a lock of hair; she scrubbed away tears that were trickling. So this was it! The powwow over business and politics had not been stirring even languid interest in her. Now her emotions were rioting. Here seemed to be something worth while in the life of the master! "But I will marry my own first love With her primrose face; for old things are best. And the flower in her bosom I prize it above-- "My God!" Mac Tavish gasped. "Next he'll be playing jiggle-ma-ree wi' dollies on his desk! His wits hae gane agley!"