One day in the tail end of November the old Major came stumping down the stairs from his sanctum--anyhow, he always called it his sanctum--upon the top floor in a little partitioned-off space adjoining the chief's office, where he had a desk of his own and where he did his work. He had a wad of copy paper in his hand. In dress and in manner he was the same old Major that he had been in the flush times two years back, when he used to come in daily, ostensibly to get some exchanges but really to sit and sit, and bore everybody who would listen with tiresome long accounts of things that happened between 1861 and 1865--not the shabby forlorn figure he became that first summer after he got his twelve-dollar-a-week job--but his former self, recreated all over again. His fullbreasted shirt of fine linen jutted out above the unbuttoned top of his low waistcoat in pleaty, white billows and his loose black sailor's tie made a big clump at his throat where the ends of his Lord Byron collar came together. His cuffs almost covered his hands and his longish white hair was like silk floss lying on his coat collar behind. That little white goatee of his jutted out under his lower lip like a tab of carded wool. Altogether he was the Major of yore, rejoicing sartorially in his present state of comparative prosperity. The boys around the shop always said that if the Major had only ten dollars and fifty cents in the world he would spend five dollars of it for his club dues and five of it on his wardrobe and give the remaining fifty cents to some beggar. I guess he would have, too. He came downstairs this day and walked up to Devore, and laid down his sheaf of pages at Devore's elbow. “A special contribution, sir,” he said very ceremoniously. Devore ran through the first page, which was covered with pencil marks--the Major always wrote his stuff out in long hand--and glanced up, a little bit astonished. “Kind of out of your usual line, isn't it, Major Stone?” he asked. “In a measure, sir--yes,” stated the old man; and he rocked on his high heels as though he might be nervous regarding the reception his contribution would have in this quarter. “Under the circumstances I feel justified in a departure from the material I customarily indite. But if you feel--” “Oh, that's all right!” said Devore, divining what the Major meant to say before the Major finished saying it. “There's always room for good stuff.” He laid the first sheet aside and shuffled through the sheets under it, picking out lines and appraising the full purport of the manuscript, as any skilled craftsman of a newspaper copy desk can do in half the length of time an outsider would be needing to make out the sense of it. “About young Morehead, eh? I didn't know you knew him, Major?”