That was a truth that tyrants never learned and that Governments too frequently shut their eyes to. God would hold him responsible for his strength. If he had the strength of ten thousand men, he still had no right to do wrong. So at length he got to see things in their true proportion and perspective. The strength that had come to him was only an adventitious kind of strength, after all. Unless he had another and a better kind of strength to balance it, it might prove his destruction. What he needed most was moral strength, strength to use wisely and justly his opportunities, strength to hold the balance evenly, strength to do the right, whatever it might cost him, to suffer loss for conscience' sake, to do to others what he would they should do to him. If he ever forgot the pit out of which he had been digged, success would be a failure in the most direful sense. He trembled when he saw the danger, and prayed God to help him. He was walking on the edge of a precipice and knew it; a precipice over which thousands of so-called successful men had fallen. "Ruth," he said to his sister one evening, with a grave look in his eyes, "if you ever see me growing proud, remind me that my mother died in a workhouse." "Ralph?" she questioned, with a look of surprise on her face. "I am not joking," he said solemnly. "I was never in more sober earnest. I have stood in slippery places many times before, but never in one so slippery as this." "Are not things going well at the mine?" she asked, in alarm. "Too well," he answered. "The shareholders will get twenty per cent. on their money the first year." "And you are a large shareholder," she said, with a look of elation in her eyes. "Besides which, there are the dues to the landlord, as well as the salary of the manager. Do you not see, Ruth, that this sudden change of fortune is a perilous thing?" "To some people it might be, Ralph." "It is to me. It came to me this afternoon as I walked across the 'floors' and men touched their caps to me." "But you can never forget the past," she said. "But men do forget the past," he answered. "Would you ever imagine for a moment that Lord Probus, for instance, was not to the manner born?" "I have seen him only two or three times," she answered; "but it seems to me that he is always trying to be a lord, which proves----" "Which proves what?" "Well, you see, a man who is really a gentleman does not try to be one. He is one, and there's an end of it; he hasn't to try." "Oh, I see. Then forgetting the past is all a pretence?" "A man may forget his poverty, but I do not think he can forget his parents. You need not remember where mother died, but how she and father lived; their goodness is our greatest fortune." He did not make any further reply then, and a little later he put on his hat and said-- "I am going along to see William. He went home poorly this morning." "Poorly?" "Caught a chill, I fancy. The weather has been very changeable, you know."