Tom retired to bed the night after his mother had confided to him the history of his father's business trials, feeling that she had conferred an honor upon him in thus sharing with him her life-secret, and that he understood his parents as he never did before. He was conscious, also, that she had put him under new obligation to be always frank with her, as she had been with him; that she had, in fact, made the obligation very sacred, for he realized that it was an act of condescension in her thus to make him the repository of her secrets, while to share his with her was but the duty of a child, and for his own advantage. And he thought, "How can I now desert the family for any imaginary good, and leave her to reproach me by her patient cross-bearing for dear father and the children's sake?" It cost him a bitter struggle to act in accordance with this view. In the darkness of the night he wrestled long and hard to put down the wish to free himself from the burden that was now laid upon his conscience. He, the squatter's son, in his wretched life, had built up a golden future for himself, as the ambitious young, of every condition, are sure to do when once the heart is roused to wish, and the mind to plan, for great things. And now, to give it all up, and come down to the cheerless drudgery of home-service in _such_ a home,--it could not be expected that he could do this, only after a severe conflict with his own nature, if at all. It is true his mother had exhorted him to wait for Providence to open the door before him. But he could not help recalling, with an aching heart, through how many long, weary years she had waited; and what door of relief had been opened for her? And was she not a thousand fold more deserving of such an interposition than he? He reflected on this point till his brain was in a whirl; the more he pondered the matter, the darker it seemed. "I am called," he reasoned, "to keep by the family if I never see brighter days--that's the meaning of her words, and the demands of my lot. Am I ready to do this--to be true to duty, if it involves, as it has to her, poverty, seclusion from privileges, toil, suffering, obscurity?" He knew that he ought thus to decide, and to decide cheerfully. But he could not. He tried again and again to reach the decision only to recoil from it. His will was powerless to calm the rebellion within. Ah, the pioneer's ragged son had been precipitated into a solemn moral crisis, which tested him, and showed him how weak he was! The tumult of feeling, and sharpness of the battle, had, at length, cast him into utter despair, when his mother's remark concerning his father's mistake in setting about getting rich by the strength of his own will, abruptly recurred to him. "What did she mean by that?" he asked; and he sat bolt upright in bed to consider the point.