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."

By this time Robert's head was bent again, and his face buried in
his hands.

"My turn next," said James. "I haven't much to say--only this.