“The scheme was a clever one,” he said, “and worked well, and no obstacle stood in the way of these conspirators until a person known as Rhyming Joe came on the scene.  This person knew the history of Ralph’s parentage and saw through Craft’s duplicity; and, in an unguarded moment, the attorney for the plaintiff closed this man’s mouth by means which we can only guess at, and sent him forth to hide among the moral and the social wrecks that constitute the flotsam and the jetsam of society.  But his words, declaring Simon Craft’s bold scheme a fabric built upon a lie, had already struck upon the ears and pierced into the heart of one whose tender conscience would not let him rest with the burden of this knowledge weighing down upon it.  What was it that he heard, gentlemen?  We can only conjecture.  The laws of evidence drop down upon us here and forbid that we should fully know.  But that it was a tale that brought conviction to the mind of this brave boy you cannot doubt.  It is for no light cause that he comes here to publicly renounce his right and title to the name, the wealth, the high maternal love that yesterday was lying at his feet and smiling in his face.  The counsel for the plaintiff tries to throw upon him the mantle of the eavesdropper, but the breath of this boy’s lightest word lifts such a covering from him, and reveals his purity of purpose and his agony of mind in listening to the revelation that was made.  I do not wonder that he should lose the power to move on hearing it.  I do not wonder that he should be compelled, as if by some strange force, to sit and listen quietly to every piercing word.  I can well conceive how terrible the shock would be to one who came, as he did, fresh from a home where love had made the hours so sweet to him that he thought them fairer than any he had ever known before.  I can well conceive what bitter disappointment and what deep emotion filled his breast.  But the struggle that began there then between his boyish sense of honor and his desire for home, for wealth, for fond affection, I cannot fathom that;—­it is too deep, too high, too terrible for me to fully understand.  I only know that honor was triumphant; that he bade farewell to love, to hope, to home, to the brightest, sweetest things in all this world of beauty, and turned his face manfully, steadfastly, unflinchingly to the right.  With the help and counsel of one honest man, he set about to check the progress of a mighty wrong.  No disappointment discouraged him, no fear found place in his heart, no distance was too great for him to traverse.  He knew that here, to-day, without his presence, injustice would be done, dishonesty would be rewarded, and shameless fraud prevail.  It was for him, and him alone, to stop it, and he set out upon his journey hither.  The powers of darkness were arrayed against him, fate scowled savagely upon him, disaster blocked his path, the iron horse refused to draw him, but he remained undaunted and determined.  He had no time to lose; he left the