"All my life you've given me things, Aunt Elizabeth. You've given me
everything. Home, happiness, love--everything that could be given. So
much that you could never be repaid, and all I can do is to love you, you
see, and honor you as if you were my mother, in fact. But there's just
one thing that can't be given. And that's a name!"

He paused. Elizabeth was listening with a stricken face, and the heart of
Vance thundered with his excitement. Vaguely he felt that there was
something fine and clean and honorable in the heart of this youth which
was being laid bare; but about that he cared very little. He was getting
at facts and emotions which were valuable to him in the terms of dollars
and cents.

"It makes me choke up," said Terence, "to have you offer me this great
thing. It's a fine name, Cornish. But you know that I can't do it. It
would be cowardly--a sort of rotten treason for me to change. It would be
wrong. I know it would be wrong. I'm a Colby, Aunt Elizabeth. Every time
that name is spoken, I feel it tingling down to my fingertips. I want to
stand straighter, live cleaner. When I looked at the old Colby place in
Virginia last year, it brought the tears to my eyes. I felt as if I were
a product of that soil. Every fine thing that has ever been done by a
Colby is a strength to me. I've studied them. And every now and then when
I come to some brave thing they've done, I wonder if I could do it. And
then I say to myself that I _must_ be able to do just such things or else
be a shame to my blood.

"Change my name? Why, I've gone all my life thanking God that I come of a
race of gentlemen, clean-handed, and praying God to make me worthy of it.
That name is like a whip over me. It drives me on and makes me want to do