Myles found it a somewhat more difficult matter to dispose of others, old comrades of his own, who were working away in the same old places, no higher than they ever had been; and who, unable to rise themselves, were lost in astonishment that he should be put over their heads. Some of them were strongly inclined to be provokingly familiar; first jocosely, and then maliciously, insubordinate; utterly unconscious of the mental gulf between him and them. But the stronger brain and will of the man who had risen beyond them was able to check these manifestations of feeling. One or two sharp examples, and a most unequivocal demonstration that no nonsense would be endured, reduced them to their natural places. Ever afterwards he had the name amongst them of having become hard, inconsiderate, and a fine gentleman. He knew it and regretted it, but accepted it as inevitable, remembering the time when he had resented the fact that the law did not compel all men to live on the same level. The new manager’s eyes appeared to be ubiquitous--nothing escaped them; but good work and good conduct were as keenly noted by him as bad, and he let the approval be as distinctly felt as the displeasure. There was, moreover, another thing which soon began to tell more than all the others put together: he was utterly unconscious of deserving ill-will; he was so evidently bent upon work, hard work, and nothing but work, and not upon hectoring it over those who had become his subordinates, that distrust gradually subsided. Sneers and scoffs had no effect whatever upon him; they were ignored in a manner so complete as to recoil with disconcerting effect upon their originators. That grave absorbed face, those eyes which noted everything, that ready presence of mind, that seemingly unwearying, untiring strength, that utter disregard of the amount of work which fell upon his own shoulders, soon began to tell upon individuals, and, through them, upon the mass. Myles wrote Sebastian regular accounts of his business transactions, hoping they met with his approval. He never named any disputes with the work-people, leaving his master to infer that he was, as the latter had said, ‘shaking down’ to his new work.