But no advance of salary came to the young man as a result. It was one of Captain Hallam's rules never to pay a man more for his services than he must, and never to advance a man's salary until the advance was asked for. Captain Hallam was in no fibre of his being a miser, but he acted always upon those cold-blooded prudential principles that had brought him wealth. It was not money that this great captain of commerce worshiped, but success. Success was the one god of his idolatry. Outside of his business he was liberal in the extreme. Even in his business operations he never hesitated at lavish expenditure where such expenditure promised good results. But he regarded all unnecessary spending as waste, of the kind that imperils success. In his cynical moments, indeed, he sometimes said that "if you have a valuable man in your employ, you must keep him poor; otherwise you'll lose him." But in so saying he perhaps did himself an injustice. He was apt to feign a heartless selfishness that he did not feel. Little by little Guilford Duncan had learned all this as he had learned business methods. He had at first modestly proposed to himself nothing more in the way of achievement than to make himself a valuable subordinate--a private, or at most a corporal or a sergeant--in the ranks of the great army of work. But before many months had passed his modesty was compelled to yield somewhat to an increasingly clear understanding of conditions and possibilities. Somewhat to his own surprise he began to suspect himself of possessing capacities superior to those of the men about him, and even superior to those of many men who had risen to high place in commerce and finance. As Captain Hallam came more and more to rely upon the sagacity and character of this his most trusted man, he more and more brought young Duncan into those confidential conferences with the leading men of affairs, which were frequently necessary in the planning and execution of important enterprises, or in the meeting of difficulties and obstacles. In that way Duncan was brought into personal contact with the recognized masters--big and little--with railroad presidents, financiers, bankers, capitalists, and other men whose positions were in a greater or less degree commanding. At first he modestly held himself as nothing more than the tool and servitor of these great men. But presently he began to suspect that they were not very great men after all--to see that it was usually he himself who devised and suggested the enterprises that these men undertook, and he who saved them from mistakes in the execution of those enterprises.