"The man told you the truth, Ruth," Jim Colter answered. "Don't be frightened. I have done wrong, for I should have told you before. My name is John Carter under the law, though I have borne the name of Jim Colter for fourteen years and it seems far more like my own name than the other, for I have learned to be a man under it."
Ruth drew herself away, clinging to the horse's mane, her body rigid and her tears dry.
"You mean you have been deceiving me and have asked me to marry you without my knowing your real name?" she asked, all her fear and suspicion of men returning. If Jack had once hated what she called "Ruth's schoolmarm manner," Jim Colter was now to know her in the light of an upright judge.
"Of course I meant to tell you my story some day, Ruth," he replied almost top humbly. "I thought things over a long time and I didn't see how I was doing you any harm to keep my old name and past a secret from you until you learned to love me. Maybe I was mistaken, but I didn't want you to love the man I used to be, I wanted you to love the man I am now. I could see that you were growing more understanding every day about little things, and not so hard and narrow, and I thought maybe if you loved me you'd be able to forgive something that happened so many years ago it seems almost like a bad dream."
"I never could marry anyone who deceived me," the girl returned frigidly.
"I wasn't deceiving you, I was just waiting to tell you. Maybe you will listen to the story now?" Jim asked. "It won't take long." Then before Ruth could reply he went on: "My father and mother had two sons, and I was the older. We were an old Virginia family and had been rich before the war. I was a good-for-nothing fellow, never studied, had no ambition and used to spend all of my time out of doors. My brother Ben was a different sort, a brilliant, studious chap, and we believed he would some day restore the family fortunes. After graduating at the high school he went to Richmond to study law, but as I had never studied anything there was nothing for me to do but to get a job as clerk in a store in our town. Both of us were boys at this time, Ben twenty and I only a little older. One night pretty late I was alone in the store, and Ben appeared, saying he had come down from Richmond because he had to have three hundred dollars quick, that very night. Well, I knew that father and mother and I didn't have thirty dollars between us. Ben suggested that I borrow the money from my employer, as I knew the combination of his safe. In a few days Ben was sure he would have the money to pay back and I could explain the whole situation. I am not excusing myself, Ruth. I knew I was sinning when I borrowed another man's money without his consent. Ben couldn't pay back, and I told the man I worked for what I had done. I offered to take any punishment the law ordered and then to come back to his shop and work until I paid him the last cent. The man forgave me, Ruth, and was willing to let me work out my salvation; but there was one thing I had not counted on, and that was family pride. When my father and mother learned what I had done they asked me to leave town, change my name and never to come home again."
"Did they know you took the money for your brother?" Ruth queried.
Jim shook his head. "What was the use? My sin was just the same. I paid the man back years ago, Ruth. Now can you forgive me?"
"I am sorry, Jim," Ruth answered kindly, but in a manner as remote from him and his need as though she had been a thousand miles away. "I am sure you will understand, but I must take back my promise. I can't be the wife of a man who has done wrong, no matter how much he has repented. Has no one ever known of what you did in all these years?"
"One man besides Joe Dawson, who is the nephew of the man from whom I took the money," Jim returned. "He was John Ralston. I told him my story a few days before he died and he left me the guardian of his little girls, to manage their property until Jack is twenty-one." And this was the only defense Jim Colter ever made for himself.