nd he became the President of his country just as I knew he
would. While I am not saying whether he is my son or not, I can not say
he isn't; and he can't, either, because he can't remember whether it was
himself or his sister that was brought that day by the fine lady and
exchanged for his brother. So you see, sir, just how it is."

Gud did not see, but disliked to admit it, so he asked that the rich
mother of the President of the Great Republic be brought also before
him.

As she came into the room he saw what a grand old lady she was, for she
walked erect and proud and her manners were queenly and stately, and Gud
could see how she impressed all the poor men in the courtroom with her
greatness.

When the rich mother of the President began speaking in a low, melodious
voice that quivered with emotion, she said:

"Your honor, there is naught I can tell save to confess that when my
child was born I was so overwhelmed with maternal emotion that I became
ambitious for my child. But I knew that I was rich and lived in a
mansion and that riches are a handicap to any child. I recalled that it
was always the boys born in log cabins and nurtured in poverty that
became our great men, and presidents of our great Republic.

"So I took my darling babe with me in my car and drove out into the
mountains where the soil was rocky and the people were poor, and finally
I came to a very picturesque log cabin that had only three sides. I
stopped the car, and took my own child and stole toward the cabin and
peeped in. There sat a poor, blind, widowed mother knitting with a ball
of coarse yarn.

"And over in the corner I saw a cow trough and a horse blanket and it
was from there that the cry of the child came. So I stole over and
raised the blanket and saw there the faces of two sweet babes. I closed
my eyes and tore off the wrappings from my own child and quietly placed
him in the trough; and then, seizing one of the babes in the trough, I
wrapped it in the silken robes I had taken from my own child and
hastened back to my car.

"The child I stole, when he learned to talk, told me that he was a boy."

"Pardon me, madame," interrupted Gud, "but what was the sex of your own
child that you left in the cow trough?"

At the question the refined lady blushed painfully. "Do not insult me,
sir," she said icily. Then she continued: "I raised this child of the
poor blind widow and he became the best dancer of the younger set. But
while I