ance, he left the house.

His wife arose, and with feeble steps tottered to the door of the
cottage to look after him. A few steps brought him to the foot of the
cliff, up the steep face of which a zigzag path led upwards for fully
four hundred feet, a narrow track trodden by the bare feet of hardy
mountaineers into some semblance of a pathway, but such as few denizens
of towns would willingly have taken. Layton, however, stepped along like
one whose foot was not new to the heather; nay, the very nature of the
ascent, the bracing air of the sea, and something in the peril itself of
the way, seemed to revive in the man his ancient vigor; and few, seeing
him from the beach below, as he boldly breasted the steep bluff, or
sprang lightly over some fissured chasm, would have deemed him one long
since past the prime of life,--one who had spent more than youth, and
its ambitions, in excess.

At first, the spirit to press onward appeared to possess him entirely;
but ere he reached the half ascent, he turned to look down on the yellow
strip of strand and the little cottage, up to whose very door-sill
now the foam seemed curling. Never before had its isolation seemed so
complete. Not a sail was to be seen seaward, not even a gull broke the
stillness with his cry; a low, mournful plash, with now and then a
rumbling half thunder, as the sea resounded within some rocky cavern,
were the only sounds, and Layton sat down on a mossy ledge, to drink
in the solitude in all its fulness. Amidst thoughts of mingled pain and
pleasure, memories of long-past struggles, college triumphs and college
friendships, came dreary recollections of dark reverses, when the world
seemed to fall back from him, and leave him to isolation. Few had
ever started with more ambitious yearnings,--few with more personal
assurances of success. Whatever he tried he was sure to be told,
"_There_ lies your road, Layton; _that_ is the path will lead you
to high rewards." He had, besides,--strange inexplicable gift,--that
prestige of superiority about him that made men cede the place to him,
as if by prescription. "And what had come of it all?--what had come of
it all?" he cried out aloud, suddenly awaking out of the past to face
the present. "Why have I failed?" asked he wildly of himself. "Is
it that others have passed me in the race? Have my successes been
discovered to have been gained by trick or fraud? Have my acquirements
been pronounced mere pretensions? These,