“I listened and took his advice.  I went to the Academy.  My story was there as soon as I was, and I found myself sneered at and shunned.  Many a time I would have given up in despair, had it not been for the encouragement of my counselor.  He furnished the backbone for me.  I was determined that his belief in me should be justified.  I studied hard and came out at the head of my class.  Then there seemed to be no chance of my earning any more money that summer.  But a farmer at Newbridge, who cared nothing about the character of his help, if he could get the work out of them, offered to hire me.  The prospect was distasteful but, urged by the man who believed in me, I took the place and endured the hardships.  Another winter of lonely work passed at the Academy.  I won the Farrell Scholarship the last year it was offered, and that meant an Arts course for me.  I went to Redmond College.  My story was not openly known there, but something of it got abroad, enough to taint my life there also with its suspicion.  But the year I graduated, Mr. Blair’s nephew, who, as you know, was the real culprit, confessed his guilt, and I was cleared before the world.  Since then my career has been what is called a brilliant one.  But”—­Malcolm turned and laid his hand on Robert’s thin shoulder—­“all of my success I owe to my brother Robert.  It is his success—­not mine—­and here to-day, since we have agreed to say what is too often left to be said over a coffin lid, I thank him for all he did for me, and tell him that there is nothing I am more proud of and thankful for than such a brother.”

Robert had looked up at last, amazed, bewildered, incredulous.  His face crimsoned as Malcolm sat down.  But now Ralph was getting up.

“I am no orator as Malcolm is,” he quoted gayly, “but I’ve got a story to tell, too, which only one of you knows.  Forty years ago, when I started in life as a business man, money wasn’t so plentiful with me as it may be to-day.  And I needed it badly.  A chance came my way to make a pile of it.  It wasn’t a clean chance.  It was a dirty chance.  It looked square on the surface; but, underneath, it meant trickery and roguery.  I hadn’t enough perception to see that, though—­I was fool enough to think it was all right.  I told Robert what I meant to do.  And Robert saw clear through the outward sham to the real, hideous thing underneath.  He showed me what it meant and he gave me a preachment about a few Monroe Traditions of truth and honor.  I saw what I had been about to do as he saw it—­as all good men and true must see it.  And I vowed then and there that I’d never go into anything that I wasn’t sure was fair and square and clean through and through.  I’ve kept that vow.  I am a rich man, and not a dollar of my money is ‘tainted’ money.  But I didn’t make it.  Robert really made every cent of my money.  If it hadn’t been for him I’d have been a poor man to-day, or behind prison bars, as are the other men who went into that deal when I backed out.  I’ve got a son here.  I hope he’ll be as clever as his Uncle Malcolm; but I hope, still more earnestly, that he’ll be as good and honorable a man as his Uncle Robert.”