Mac’s face showed emotion.  I expected it would.  I had prepared for the interview, and I knew Mac.  I thought I had won; but he changed the conversation abruptly.

“Look over there, Bruce,” and he pointed with his whip toward the distance.  “Away off on the other side of the Island is where Schurman of Cornell was born.  There are lots of such men who come from around here.  Down in that village is the birthplace of your Secretary of the Interior.  These people, my people, worship God first and learning next.  They are prouder of producing such men than they are of the Island itself, and to use student language, that is ‘going some.’”

“Yes, I suppose you are right, Mac,” I answered, not quite seeing why he had thrown me off, “but they do not seem to know you.”

“No,” he answered quickly. “they do not, and I do not want them to.  It would frighten them off.  It would require explanations.  What difference if I have six letters after my name?  To these people, worshiping what I know rather than what I am, I would not be Alec any more.”

“But Mac, you will come back now, won’t you!  The college wants you; you mustn’t refuse.”

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?”