One day he sat by the window, his clean, square chin in his hand, his eyes lost in abstraction.  As he looked, the winter murk parted noiselessly, as though the effect were prearranged; a blue sky shone through on a glint of bluer water; and, wonder of wonders, there through the grimy dirty roar of Adams Street a single, joyful robin note flew up to him.

At once a great homesickness overpowered him.  He could see plainly the half-sodden grass of the campus, the budding trees, the red “gym” building, and the crowd knocking up flies.  In a little while the shot putters and jumpers would be out in their sweaters.  Out at Regents’ Field the runners were getting into shape.  Bob could almost hear the creak of the rollers smoothing out the tennis courts; he could almost recognize the voices of the fellows perching about, smell the fragrant reek of their pipes, savour the sweet spring breeze.  The library clock boomed four times, then clanged the hour.  A rush of feet from all the recitation rooms followed as a sequence, the opening of doors, the murmur of voices, occasionally a shout.  Over it sounded the sharp, half-petulant advice of the coaches and the little trainer to the athletes.  It was getting dusk.  The campus was emptying.  Through the trees shone lights.  And Bob looked up, as he had so often done before, to see the wonder of the great dome against the afterglow of sunset.

Harvey was examining him with some curiosity.

“Copied those camp reports?” he inquired.

Bob glanced hastily at the clock.  He had been dreaming over an hour.

A little later Fox came in; and a little after that Harvey returned bringing in his hand the copies of the camp reports, but instead of taking them directly to Bob for correction, as had been his habit, he laid them before Fox.  The latter picked them up and examined them.  In a moment he dropped them on his desk.

“Do you mean to tell me,” he demanded of Harvey, “that seventeen only ran ten thousand?  Why, it’s preposterous!  Saw it myself.  It has a half-million on it, if there’s a stick.  Let’s see Parsons’s letter.”

While Harvey was gone, Fox read further in the copy.

“See here, Harvey,” he cried, “something’s dead wrong.  We never cut all this hemlock.  Why, hemlock’s ’way down.”

Harvey laid the original on the desk.  After a second Fox’s face cleared.

“Why, this is all right.  There were 480,000 on seventeen.  And that hemlock seems to have got in the wrong column.  You want to be a little more careful, Jim.  Never knew that to happen before.  Weren’t out with the boys last night, were you?”

But Harvey refused to respond to frivolity.

“It’s never happened before because I never let it happen before,” he replied stiffly.  “There have been mistakes like that, and worse, in almost every report we’ve filed.  I’ve cut them out.  Now, Mr. Fox, I don’t have much to say, but I’d rather do a thing myself than do it over after somebody else.  We’ve got a good deal to keep track of in this office, as you know, without having to go over everybody else’s work too.”