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“I’ve cared for you and loved you since the time you were born, lad,” he said. “You seem like my own son, and I’ve a fancy to leave you my name. It’s all I can leave you, for I’m a poor man, but it’s an honest name, lad, and I’ve kept it free from stain. See that you do likewise, and you’ll have your mother’s blessing and mine.”

Elliott fought a hard battle that spring evening.

“Hold your tongue and keep the Fraser,” whispered the tempter. “Campbell is your name. You’ve borne it all your life. And the condition itself is a ridiculous one–no fairness about it. You made the highest marks and you ought to be the winner. It isn’t as if you were wronging Stone or any of the others who worked hard and made good marks. If you throw away what you’ve won by your own hard labour, the Fraser goes to McLean, who made only seventy. Besides, you need the money and he doesn’t. His father is a rich man.”

“But I’ll be a cheat and a cad if I keep it,” Elliott muttered miserably. “Campbell isn’t my legal name, and I’d never again feel as if I had even the right of love to it if I stained it by a dishonest act. For it would be stained, even though nobody but myself knew it. Father said it was a clean name when he left it, and I cannot soil it.”

The tempter was not silenced so easily as that. Elliott passed a sleepless night of indecision. But next day he went to Marwood and asked for a private interview with the president. As a result, an official announcement was posted that afternoon on the bulletin board to the effect that, owing to a misunderstanding, the Fraser Scholarship had been wrongly awarded. Carl McLean was posted as winner.

The story soon got around the campus, and Elliott found himself rather overwhelmed with sympathy, but he did not feel as if he were very much in need of it after all. It was good to have done the right thing and be able to look your conscience in the face. He was young and strong and could work his own way through Marwood in time.

“No condolences, please,” he said to Roger Brooks with a smile. “I’m sorry I lost the Fraser, of course, but I’ve my hands and brains left. I’m going straight to my boarding-house to dig with double vim, for I’ve got to take an examination next week for a provincial school certificate. Next winter I’ll be a flourishing pedagogue in some up-country district.”

He was not, however. The next afternoon he received a summons to the president’s office. The president was there, and with him was a plump, motherly-looking woman of about sixty.

“Mrs. Fraser, this is Elliott Hanselpakker, or Campbell, as I understand he prefers to be called. Elliott, I told your story to Mrs. Fraser last evening, and she was greatly interested when she heard your rather peculiar name. She will tell you why herself.”

“I had a young half-sister once,” said Mrs. Fraser eagerly. “She married a man named John Hanselpakker and went West, and somehow I lost all trace of her. There was, I regret to say, a coolness between us over her marriage. I disapproved of it because she married a very poor man. When I heard your name, it struck me that you might be her son, or at least know something about her. Her name was Mary Helen Rodney, and I loved her very dearly in spite of our foolish quarrel.”

There was a tremour in Mrs. Fraser’s voice and an answering one in Elliott’s as he replied: “Mary Helen Rodney was my dear mother’s name, and my father was John Hanselpakker.”

“Then you are my nephew,” exclaimed Mrs. Fraser. “I am your Aunt Alice. My boy, you don’t know how much it means to a lonely old woman to have found you. I’m the happiest person in the world!”

She slipped her arm through Elliott’s and turned to the sympathetic president with shining eyes.

“He is my boy forever, if he will be. Blessings on the Fraser Scholarship!”

“Blessings rather on the manly boy who wouldn’t keep it under false colours,” said the president with a smile. “I think you are fortunate in your nephew, Mrs. Fraser.”

So Elliott Hanselpakker Campbell came back to Marwood the next year after all.