There was still more emotion in Mac's voice, when he answered: "Bruce, old man, don't tempt me. You can not know, and the faculty can not know. You say I ought to love all this and I do; but not with the love I have for the old college, though I was born here. Can you imagine that old Roman general, whom they took away from his plow to lead an army, refusing the offer but keeping the memory of it bright in his heart ever after? That is my case now, old man. There is nothing in this world I would rather have had than your message, but I must refuse the offer." "Now Mac," I urged, "be reasonable. There is nothing here for you. Scenery won't make up." "Don't I know it?" and Mac stopped the buggy again. "Don't I know it? But there is something bigger to me here than the love of the things God made me to do--and he surely made me for Greek, Bruce. Do not think I am foolish or headstrong, I long for my work. But Bruce, if you can not have two things that you love, all you can do is to give up one and go on loving the other, without having it. That's my fix, Bruce." "Yes, Mac, but are you sure you realize what it means to you?" I began urging, because I knew that I would soon have to play my trump card. "Here you are, a grayhead at thirty-five, without a thing in life but that farm, and you--heavens, Mac, don't you know that you are one of the greatest Greek scholars in the world? Don't you think you owe the world something? What are you giving? Nothing! You have suppressed even the knowledge of what you are from the people around you. You get a curt nod from the head of a little college. These people call you Alec, when the whole world wants to call you Master. You are doing work that any farm hand could do, when you ought to be doing work that no one can do as well as yourself. Is this a square deal for other people, Mac? Were you not given obligations as well as gifts?" "Yes, Bruce." Mac said it sadly. "There's the rub. I was given obligations as well as gifts, and I am taking you home with me now, instead of threshing this out in the hotel at Charlottetown, because I want you and you alone to realize that I am not just a stubborn Islander. And there is home." He pointed to a cottage in the field. The cottage was back from the road nearly a quarter of a mile. Mac opened the gate, led the horse through it, closed it again and climbed back into the buggy beside me. There were tears in his brown eyes. "Is every one well?" said Mac hesitatingly. "Is everybody well--I mean of the people I knew best back there?" he asked. I knew what he meant. "Yes, Mac, _she_ is well," I said, "and I know she is waiting." I had played my "trump card," but Mac was silent.