us projects to Herbert Layton.

The honor of the University was too deeply involved to suffer such a
charge to be rashly circulated. The board summoned the Regius Professor
to attend before them. He returned his reply to the summons on the back
of a letter constituting him a member of the "United Irishmen," the
great rebel association of the day. As much out of regard to their own
fame, as in pity for a rashness that might have cost him his life, they
destroyed the document and deprived him of his fellowship.

From the day that he wandered forth a ruined, houseless, destitute man,
little is known of him. At long intervals of time, men would say, "Could
that have been poor Herbert, that 'Layton,' taken up by the police for
drunkenness, or accused of some petty crime? Was it he who was charged
with sending threatening letters to this one, or making insolent demands
on that?" Another would say, "I could swear I saw Layton as a witness
in one of those pot-house trials where the course of law proceedings is
made the matter of vulgar jest" Another met him hawking quack medicines
in a remote rural district.

It is not necessary we should follow him through these changes, each
lower than the last in degradation. We arrive by a bound at a period
when he kept a small apothecary's shop in a little village of North
Wales, and where, with seeming reformation of character, he lived
discreetly, and devoted himself assiduously to the education of an only
son.

By dint of immense effort, and sacrifices the most painful, he succeeded
in entering his boy at Cambridge; but in his last year, his means
failing, he had obtained a tutorship for him,--no less a charge than
that of the young Marquis of Agincourt,--an appointment to which his
college tutor had recommended him. Almost immediately after this, a
vacancy occurring in the little village of Ballintray for a dispensary
doctor, Layton applied for the appointment, and obtained it. Few,
indeed, of the electors had ever heard of his name, but all were
astonished at the ample qualifications tendered by one willing to accept
such humble duties. The rector of the parish, Dr. Millar, was, though
his junior, perhaps, the only one well conversant with Layton's story,
for he had been his contemporary at the University.

On the two or three occasions on which they met, Dr. Millar never
evinced by the slightest allusion any knowledge of the other's
antecedents. He even, by adroit reference to E