But, dear mother, I think I have come fairly to my senses.  I have come to a resolution not to spend a dollar foolishly; thus far I have been able to keep my promise to myself, and, by the help of heaven, I mean to keep it to the end.  My first thought, on seeing my folly, was of my shameful disregard to my mother’s condition.  In this letter are ten dollars.  Every month you will receive from me a like sum—­more, if you need it.  As soon as I can lay by a couple of thousand dollars, I will look around for some means of entering into business, and, as soon after as possible, make provision for you, that your last days may be spent in ease and comfort.”

“God bless the dear boy!” exclaimed Mrs. Peyton, dropping the letter, while the tears gushed from her eyes.  The happy mother wept long for joy.  With her trembling hand she wrote a reply, and urged him, by the tenderest and most sacred considerations, to keep to his good resolutions.

At the end of a year Peyton examined his affairs, and found himself freed from debt; but there were nearly one hundred dollars for which he could not account.  He puzzled over it for one or two evenings, and made out over fifty dollars spent foolishly.

“No doubt the rest of it will have to be passed to that account,” said he, at last, half angry with himself.  “I’ll have to watch closer than this.  At the end of the next year, I’ll not be in doubt about where a hundred dollars have gone.”

It was but rarely, now, that you would hear the name of Peyton mentioned.  Before, everybody said he was a “fine, generous fellow;” everybody praised him.  Now he seemed to be forgotten, or esteemed of no consideration.  He felt this; but he had started to accomplish a certain end, and he had sufficient strength of mind not to be driven from his course.

“Have you seen Peyton of late?” I asked, some two years after this change in his habits.  I spoke to one of his old intimate associates.

“No, not for a month of Sundays,” was his lightly-spoken reply.  “What a remarkable change has passed over him!  Once, he used to be a fine, generous fellow—­his heart was in his hand; but now he is as penurious as a miser, and even more selfish:  he will neither give nor take.  If you happen to be walking with him, and, after waiting as long as decency will permit to be asked to step in somewhere for refreshments, you propose something, he meets you with—­’No, I thank you, I am not dry,’ or hungry, as the case may be.  It’s downright savage, it is!”

“This is a specimen of the way in which the world estimates men,” said I to myself, after separating from the individual who complained thus of Peyton.  “The world is wonderfully impartial in its judgment of men’s conduct!”

At the end of five years from the time Peyton reformed his loose habits, he had saved up and placed out at interest the sum of two thousand dollars; and this, after having sent to his mother, regularly, ten dollars every month during the whole period.  The fact that he had saved so much was not suspected by any.  It was supposed that he had laid up some money, but no one thought he had over four or five hundred dollars.