Whatever the causes of these several effects, the one dominating power which now controlled him was his veneration for his mother's name and honor. For on the night succeeding Amos Cobb's visit after she had dropped upon her knees and poured out her heart in prayer she had gone into Oliver's bedroom, and shutting the door had told him of the mortgage; of his father's embarrassment, and the danger they suffered of losing the farm--their only hope for their old age--unless success crowned Richard's inventions. With his hand fast in hers she had given him in exact detail all that she had done to ward off this calamity; recounting, word by word, what she had said to the Colonel, lowering her voice almost to a whisper as she spoke of the solemn promise she had made him--involving her own and her husband's honor--and the lengths to which she was prepared to go to keep her obligations to the bank. Then, her hand still clasping his, the two sitting side by side on his bed, his wondering, startled eyes looking into hers--for this world of anxiety was an unknown world to him--she had by slow stages made him realize how necessary it was that he, their only son, and their sole dependence, should begin at once to earn his daily bread; not only on his own account but on hers and his father's. In her tenderness she had not told him that the real reason was his instability of purpose; fearing to wound his pride, she had put it solely on the ground of his settling down to some work. "It is the law of nature, my son," she had added. "Everything that lives must WORK to live. You have only to watch the birds out here in the Square to convince you of that. Notice them to-morrow, when you go out. See how busy they are; see how long it takes for any one of them to get a meal. You are old enough now to begin to earn your own bread, and you must begin at once, Ollie. Your father can no longer help you. I had hoped your profession would do this for you, but that is not to be thought of now." Oliver, at first, had been stunned by it all. He had never before given the practical side of life a single thought. Everything had gone along smoothly from his earliest remembrance. His father's house had been his home and his protection; his room with its little bed and pretty hangings and all its comforts--a room cared for like a girl's--had always been open to him. He had never once asked himself how these things came about, nor why they continued. These revelations of his mother's therefore were like the sudden opening of a door covering a vault over which he had walked unconsciously and which now, for the first time, he saw yawning beneath him. "Poor daddy," were his first words. "I never knew a thing about his troubles; he seems always so happy and so gentle. I am so sorry--dear daddy--dear dad--" he kept repeating.