ho is more of a man, in my judgment, than he seems.

* * * * *

I am getting to feel more and more deeply that duty calls me to labor
here. If it were not for my dear wife and children, I should decide at
once to remain. But how could she get along in this out-of-the-world
place? Can she relinquish the comforts of her eastern home, and share
with me, for the Master's sake, the privations of the wilderness? The
settlers are kind, and say we shall not suffer. A subscription paper
has been started, and has already a goodly array of names; and brother
Palmer--an excellent man of some means--says he will furnish me money
with which to build a neat cottage.

CHAPTER VIII.

TOM'S VICTORY.

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 n