Before dinner, the two gentlemen were left to a quiet chat by themselves on the cool, shady piazza. Bergan embraced this opportunity to explain, more fully than he had yet done, his motives and aims. He told his uncle,--a little proudly, it might be, for he wished it to be understood that he had come hither with a self-respecting purpose of independence, and not with any idea of leaning upon his friends,--he told his uncle that his choice of Berganton as the starting-point of his professional career, was due to the influence of his mother. Her childhood's home, and its vicinity, had always kept a tenacious hold on her affections, despite the fact that more than two-thirds of her womanhood had been spent elsewhere, and all the deeper joys and sorrows of her life had blossomed and fruited in different soil. When, therefore, it became necessary for one of her sons to go out into the world, in search of a better field of labor than was afforded in his native village, her thoughts naturally turned to the spot so haloed in her memory, and where her ancestry had sent such deep, old roots into the soil, as to create a kind of kinship for evermore between their descendants and the locality. It would be a pleasant thing for Bergan, she thought, to make a home and a name for himself in a place where he possessed so strong a claim to residence; it would be equally pleasant for the old town to recognize the familiar mould of features and character in its streets; and it would be pleasantest of all for herself to know that her son was with her kinsfolk, amid well-known scenes, rather than among strangers, on ground where her thoughts could find no foothold. Some day, she hoped to visit him there, and feed her mother's pride upon his success, at the same time that she renewed her girlhood amid old associations. Bergan then touched lightly upon his disappointment in the dull old town--finding it so much duller and older, even to decrepitude, than he had expected, and consequently, so little eligible to his purpose. And here, if he had been met by a more interested glance, and a fuller sympathy, he would have gone on to speak of the disgraceful scene into which he had been betrayed by his uncle--the Major--and the obligation under which he felt himself placed thereby to remain in Berganton, at least long enough to efface any unfavorable impression which it might have caused. But, though his uncle Godfrey heard him patiently and courteously enough, there was so little of the hearty interest of kinship in his manner, that Bergan could not bring himself to open the subject. Not only was it unpleasant in itself, but it touched at many points on deep things of his nature, which instinctively refused to pour themselves into any but a friendly, sympathetic ear.