in democracy which
should make a very laughing-stock of all the fables of aristocratic
tradition. I tell you truly that I have put all those things behind me,
as all Americans must who truly believe in the fundamental principles of
our Republic. Every man must be accepted for what he is, not for what
his father or his grandfather may have been. We read that lesson in the
lives of such men as Ben Franklin, and Abraham Lincoln, and Grant, and a
score of other notables. We read it even more clearly in everyday life.
No banker extends credit to a worthless man on the ground that he was
born to high social repute. No banker withholds credit from a man of
integrity because his father was not to be trusted. All day, every day,
men everywhere are acting upon a clear perception of the truth that each
human being must be judged by what he is, and not by what some other
person has been.

"Now I know you, Barbara, for what you _are_, and I love you for that
alone. What your father may have done or been, twenty years ago, is to
me a matter of entire indifference, except that the knowledge of it
gives you pain and sorrow. It makes no difference to me; it in no way
alters or lessens my love for you, and it never will. Knowing it all, I
am more earnest than ever in my purpose to make you my wife if I can
persuade you to that after I have told you something about myself that
may very justly seem to you a real bar to my hopes."

"Go on, please," said the girl. "Tell me what you will, but I shall
never believe anything ill of you. I _know_ better."

"Thank you for saying that, dear," he responded with a tremor in his
tone. "But unhappily others may believe it. If they do, then the career
you have expected for me must be at an end at once. My reputation for
integrity will be gone for good, and I must be content to surrender all
my ambitions. That is why I must tell you of this ugly thing before
again asking you to be my wife."

"Go on," she said again. "But I shall believe nothing bad of you, even
though an angel should tell me."

"I told you the other night," he said, "that I had quarreled with Napper
Tandy; that he had tried to tempt me with a money bribe to do an
infamous thing. He now gives it out that it was I who proposed the
bribe; that I went to him with an offer to do that infamous thing for
hire, and that he indignantly rejected the offer."

"He lies!" broke in the girl.

"Yes, he lies, of course," answered Duncan, "but