“You must give me a minute to think, if you please,” he quavered in a low voice, which in the ears of the boy had the effect of music. “Now that I am old, my memory, of which I have always been vain, is the first to desert me. If you are one of my scholars I shall recall you, for it is my boast that each of my scholars has graven a line in the tablets of my mind.” Of a sudden the aged school-master gave a cry of joy. “Why--why!” he exclaimed, “it must be William Jordan.” He held out both his hands to the boy’s father with an eagerness that was like a child’s, and the boy saw that his eyes, which a moment since were destitute of meaning, had now the pregnant beauty of an ancient masterpiece. “O that the hour should be at hand,” said the old man, “when I should cease to recall William Jordan!” The old man seemed to avert his face from that of the boy’s father in a kind of dismay; and his voice pierced the boy with an emotion that he had never felt before. “It is thirty years since you saw me last,” said the boy’s father. “In the flesh as an eager-faced young man,” said the school-master. “But every night as I sit by the fire, I summon William Jordan to lead the pageant of my experience. When my spirit is like clay you stand before it, the first among the valiant, so subtle yet so brave. When this generation, which is so restless, so brilliant, so full of vitality, seems to tell me that I am but a survival of a phase which now is nought, I say to it, ‘So be it, my children, but where is the William Jordan among you? I would have you show me his peer before I yield.’” The boy, whose nature was like the strings of some miraculous instrument which are not only susceptible to the slightest human touch, but are also responsive to the delicate waves in the air, knew that some strange emotion was overwhelming his father, although none could have perceived it but himself. “My dear old master,” said the boy’s father, with an indescribable melancholy, “it is the old voice--the old voice that we loved to hear. And it is the old courage--the old incomparable suit of mail.” “A school-master’s courage should increase as he grows old, I think,” said the old man, whose voice was like a harp. “It is true his age is menaced by all the noble energies he has failed to mould; by all the expenditure of spirit, by all the devout patience he has lavished upon them, which have come to no harvest; but is it not by giving our all without hope of a requital that in the end teaches us to accept our destiny?” The boy’s father stood like a statue before his old preceptor. “Master, your voice overcomes me,” he said. “But it is just, it is perfectly just that I should live to hear it sound reproachful in my ears.”