Norton hesitated. It would have pleased him to tell Haviland just what he thought of him, but he remembered Alice and said, “Yes,” instead, adding grudgingly, “I shall be glad to accept it.” “At twelve hundred a year?” “Yes.” “Very well, then,—that's all.” As John went back to his desk he knew that Gordon's glance followed him from the door of the private office. He mounted his stool and took up his pen. The old bookkeeper slunk over to his side and placed a trembling hand on one corner of the ledger above which John was bending intently. “What sort of a mood was he in, Norton,—nasty?” John nodded. “Did he have anything to say about me?” Without lifting his head John nodded again. Gordon fingered the corner of the big book nervously. “I never got such a calling down from him before. But then, you know, you've got to stand his temper if you want to get along with him, and what's the odds,—we're paid for it, and it's all in a lifetime.” He studied John's face guardedly. “What did he say, Norton?” “I am awfully sorry,” John began, “but perhaps you'd as soon hear it from me as from him——” “He didn't tell you I must go, did he? He didn't say that—I thought he didn't mean it——” “That's what he said.” Gordon leaned heavily against the desk. “I knew he was wanting to get rid of me, but I didn't think it would come yet a while;—I—I was hoping I could hold on a little longer. Why! I have been here forty years—I'm not fit for anything else!” Unconsciously in his excitement he raised his voice, and the last word was almost a cry. He choked down his emotion. “He'll get his deserts one of these days! A man can't go on forever, as he's gone on, walking over people, and prosper, and he'll find it so!” John stole a glance over the room. “I wouldn't speak so loud,” he cautioned. “They will hear you.” “I don't care!” fiercely. “I don't care what they hear!” but he sank his voice to a hoarse whisper. “I—it isn't right, Norton,—it isn't right!” He paused an instant to let his gaze wander about the long bare room with its rows of desks, and a sudden mist came before his eyes. “Why! I haven't missed half a dozen days since I started in here. Summer and winter every morning at eight I've pulled off my coat and hung it with my hat on that nail over there,—it's been 'Gordon's nail' for forty years!” Then he broke down completely. The office grew very hushed and still. The clerks stopped in their work and took in the scene with eager silent curiosity. Fifteen minutes later they were working away again as though nothing unusual had happened. Gordon, at his desk, was trying to add a long column of figures, while every now and then something fell upon the pages of the ledger before him that raised a round blister or blurred the ink.