the story from me?" the Doge asked, hesitating.

"All!" Jack answered.

"It strikes hard at your father."

"The truth must strike where it will, now!"

"Then, your face, so like your father's, stood for the wreck of two
lives to me, and for recollections in my own career that tinged my view
of you, Jack. You were one newcomer to Little Rivers to whom I could not
wholly apply the desert rule of oblivion to the past and judgment of
every man solely by his conduct in this community. No! It was out of the
question that I could ever look at you without thinking who you were.

"You know, of course, that your father and I spent our boyhood in
Burbridge. Once I found that he had told me an untruth and we had our
difference out, as boys will; and, as I was in the right, he confessed
the lie before I let him up. That defeat was a hurt to his egoism that he
could not forget. He was that way, John Wingfield, in his egoism. It was
like flint, and his ambition and energy were without bounds. I remember
he would say when teased that some day he should have more money than all
the town together, and when he had money no one would dare to tease him.
He had a remarkable gift of ingratiation with anyone who could be of
service to him. My uncle, who was the head of the family, was fond of
him; he saw the possibilities of success in this smart youngster in a New
England village. It was the Ewold money that gave John Wingfield his
start. With it he bought the store in which he began as a clerk. He lost
a good part of the Ewold fortune later in one of his enterprises that did
not turn out well. But all this is trifling beside what is to come.

"He went on to his great commercial career. I, poor fool, was an egoist,
too. I tried to paint. I had taste, but no talent. In outbursts of
despair my critical discrimination consigned my own work to the rubbish
heap. I tried to write books, only to find that all I had was a head
stuffed with learning, mixed with the philosophy that is death to the
concentrated application that means positive accomplishment. But I could
not create. I was by nature only a drinker at the fountain; only a
student, the pitiful student who could read his Caesar at eight, learn a
language without half trying, but with no ability to make my knowledge of
service; with no masterful purpose of my own--a failure!"

"No one is a failure who spreads kindliness and culture as he goes
through life," Jack interrupted, earnestly;