"I shan't, however, do anything more to-day," Gilly announced, rising and putting on his hat. "My nerves are somewhat over-stimulated. A walk in the park, a game of bridge, and a quiet little dinner are indicated. You'll attend to anything that turns up, won't you, old chap?" Slowly and gradually Andy Hayes was growing not only into his strength but also into the consciousness of it. He was measuring his powers--slowly, suspiciously, distrustfully. His common sense refused to ignore what he had done and was doing, but his modesty ever declined to go a step beyond the facts. All through his life this characteristic abode with him--a sort of surprise that the simple qualities he recognised in himself should stand him in such good stead, combined with an unwillingness rashly to pledge their efficacy in the greater labours of the future. Thus it came about that he was, so to say, a day behind the world's estimate in his estimate of himself. When the people about him were already sure, he was gradually reaching confidence--never the imperious self-confidence of commanding genius, which makes no question but that the future will be as obedient to its sway as the past, but a very sober trust in a proved ability, a trust based on no inner instinct of power, but solely on the plain experience that hitherto he had shown himself equal to the business which came his way--equal to it if he worked very hard at it, took it seriously, and gave all he had to give to it. The degree of self-confidence thus achieved was never sufficient to make him seek adventures; by slow growth it became enough to prevent him from turning his back on any task, however heavy, which the course of his life and the judgment of his fellows laid upon him. So step by step he moved on in his development and in his knowledge of it. He recognised now that it would have been a pity to pass his life as a butcher in Meriton--that it would have been waste of material. But he was still quite content to regard as a sufficient occupation, and triumph, of that life the building-up of Gilbert Foot and Co.'s educational publishing connection; and he was still surprised to be reminded that he had contributed anything more than hard work to that task, that it owed to him even the smallest scintilla of original suggestion. Still there it was. Perhaps he would never do a thing like that again. Very likely not. Still he had done it once. It passed from the impossibles to the possibles--a possible under strict and distrustful observation, but a possible that should be put to the proof.