"H'm! . . . Very interesting man! Telling me this morning all about Abraham Lincoln's election as President and how it was the culmination of the long political struggle between the North and the South over the question of slavery. Your great-grandfather was a young man of about your age at that time. . . . Remarkable memory for details!" mused the doctor, jerkily, as if he had a preserved specimen of Gran'pa before him in a bottle of spirit. "Got a fine head, too. . . . And there's character in his face. . . . I should say he's a man who is not easily turned from anything he's set his mind to." "He's the very devil," I admitted, "once he gets an idea into his head." "It's men like that who make for progress, you know. . . ." "Undoubtedly, doctor! I believe that in a few years' time grandfather's name will be a household word." "In a few years' time! . . ." he exclaimed. "But surely at his age--ninety-six . . ." "Oh, he's good for another thirty or forty years yet!" The doctor looked at me with a trace of alarm in his eyes; then he said rather abruptly: "Well, I must be going, Mr. Barnett." The moment he had left the house, Gran'pa entered the room. He seemed very irritable. "You must pardon me, George," he said, "but I couldn't help overhearing some of that conversation. . . . I don't think it was very nice of you to hold me up to ridicule." "I had no such intention," I replied. "It was more from a feeling of justifiable pride in your abilities than anything else." "H'm! . . . Well, it's my own fault, perhaps. . . . I've been intoxicated with this sudden flow of new energy. It went to my head, so to speak. My brain was overstimulated. I felt very much like a man who has come out of the darkness into a blaze of light. I hadn't grown used to the change. . . . Then came this terrible shock. I thought that Molly was going to die. . . ." (Although she had practically recovered, the word sent the blood rushing inwards and I involuntarily shivered.) "But, thank God, she was spared. . . . It's been one awful nightmare of fear and if anything had happened to her, I should have killed myself; but the ordeal seems to have steadied me. Something's gone snap in here"--he tapped his forehead--"and I'm whole again!" I kept silent, amazed at the sudden revelation of sanity. Said Gran'pa: "As soon as Molly is well again I intend starting life afresh. I have a great deal of experience behind me, valuable first-hand knowledge of things and persons. I don't want to quote the old tag about an ounce of experience, but it's certainly true. It will give me a big pull over the younger generation--although I shall necessarily want their help. I shall not be handicapped like most men of my age, or even twenty years younger. And, thank Heaven, I have plenty of self-confidence." He strode down the room, glanced out of the window at a burst of winter sunshine, and then came back to the hearth-rug, from which he had delivered his confession.