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.

Guilford Duncan had never in his life kept a diary. He regarded that
practice as a useless puerility and usually an indulgence in morbid
self-communing and unwholesome self-consciousness. But it was his
practice, sometimes, late at night, to set down upon paper such thoughts
as had interested him during the day, for the sole sake of formulating
them in his own mind. Often he would in this way discuss with himself
questions concerning which he had not yet matured his opinion.

He found the practice conducive to clear thinking and sound judgment. It
served for him the same purpose that the writing of intimate letters
might have done if he had had any intimates to whom to write letters.

"I've been in conference this day," he wrote one night, "with half a
d