“I never thought to see this hour,” said the boy, gathering up the pieces of silver and placing them in his father’s hand. “I know not what they have cost me, my father, but now I would that the cost were a hundred times more.” “Is it not a pious thought, beloved one,” said his father, “that that which we render is given to us again?” “I have wrought greatly in the practical sciences during the week past, my father,” said the boy. “My power increases hour by hour; the persons in the streets are nothing like so mysterious to me as they were; and yet still there are great waste places. There is, indeed, much to learn, my father, much to learn.” To-night his mood was one of rare expansion. He spoke unceasingly of what the future bore. The ten pieces of silver acted like a wine of great potency upon the too-delicate strings of the mind. “Every day, every hour, every minute I am growing in stature,” he said. “Every time my heart beats, my father, I am more than I was. To-night I feel a royal courage stirring in my flesh. There is much to learn, my father, much to learn, but one day I feel sure I shall learn it all.” “And when thou hast learnt it all, Achilles?” his father asked. “Why--why of course, my father, when I have learnt it all I shall commence author,” said the boy. That evening, for the first time in his life, he showed his contempt for the darkness by going up-stairs to bed without a candle. His father continued to sit at the table in the little room all the night through, consulting one page after another of the aged tome, which was bound so massively, until the chill morning light crept over the top of the shutters. He then walked out bare-headed, slow of gait, into the vapours of the dawn. XVII During the week which followed, the behaviour of William Jordan, Junior, was very closely scrutinized by his fellow-labourers in the vineyard of No. 24 Trafalgar Square. One and all were freely inoculated with the “traditions of the house.” Each member of the counting-house staff, from Mr. Dodson, who might be of any age and standing, to Mr. Walter Pater Walkinshaw, Mr. Aristophanes Luff, Mr. Leslie Stephen Sandars, and Mr. T. B. Macaulay Jenkins, who unmistakably were of one particular period and degree, were infected by a generous jealousy for the name and fame “of the first publishing house in London, and therefore of the civilized world.” “It ain’t, you know,” Mr. James Dodson communicated to William Jordan, Junior, in his second or unofficial manner, “but Octavius thinks so, and what Octavius thinks the staff has got d---- well to believe.”