I nibbled the food he had brought me, with some particularly heavy thoughts in regard to the course we were to take. Yesterday I was a boy, and a very foolish one, but to-day I felt myself to be a man. The feeling was the growth of a night, but it gave me new confidence in myself, and, coupled with it, an assurance that I had never had before, and that has remained with me all through the long years that have intervened. I think it must have caught the eye of Whistling Jim--the change, I mean--for he regarded me curiously and closely.