Several blocks away, a crowd of students crossing the campus in the
moonlight started a rollicking chorus. It floated blithely up to him
on the wintry night air.

"The fellows will be here in a minute," he thought. "What would she
say if she knew? I promised her that I would never, never touch a
drop of liquor or a deck of cards, and here I am, getting ready for a
night of drinking and gambling and carousing. But I've gone too far to
back out now. How they'd hoot and laugh if they knew!"

He got up, and began to fold the quilt, preparatory to putting it back
in the box. The old scenes still kept crowding upon him. He saw
himself lying on the hearth-rug, the night the boys were waiting for
him around the corner, and he was crying out, "But you _promised me!
You promised me!_" and there was his mother with the bit of a gold
piece in her hand,--the precious little keepsake that she had
treasured for thirty years, saying, in answer to her husband's
remonstrance: "No, Robert, that would make Johnny break his promise,
too, and we couldn't afford that, could we, son? We must keep our word
at any cost!"

It stood out fair and fine now, the memory of her unswerving
truthfulness, her fidelity to duty. If the commonplace deeds of those
early days had seemed of little moment to his childish eyes in
passing, he saw them at their full value now. He recognized the high
purpose with which she had pieced her little days together, now that
he could look at the whole beautiful pattern of her finished life. How
sacredly she had always kept her word to him, the slightest promise
always inviolate! Ah, the little gold coin was the very least of all
her sacrifices.