surely, cannot be alleged of
one whose fame can be attested by almost every scientific and literary
journal of the empire. No, no! the explanation is easier,--the poet was
wrong,--Fortune _is_ a Deity, and some men are born to be unlucky."

With a sudden start he arose, and rallied from these musings. He quickly
bethought himself of his engagement, and continued his way upward. When
he reached the tableland at top, it wanted but a few minutes of five
o'clock, and five was the hour for which he was invited, and there
was yet two miles to walk to the Rectory. Any one who has lived for a
considerable space estranged from society and its requirements, will
own to the sense of slavery impressed by a return to the habits of the
world. He will feel that every ordinance is a tyranny, and the necessity
of being dressed for this, or punctual for that, a downright bondage.

Thus chafing and irritable, Layton walked along. Never was man less
disposed to accept hospitality as a polite attention, and more than once
did he halt, irresolute whether he should not retrace his steps towards
home. "No man," thought he, "could get off more cheaply. They would
ascribe it all to my ignorance. What should a poor devil with eighty
pounds a year know of politeness? and when I had said, _I_ had
forgotten the invitation, they would forget _me!_"

Thus self-accusing and self-disparaging, he reached the little avenue
gate, which by a trim gravel walk led up to the parsonage. The neat
lodge, with its rustic porch, all overgrown with a rich japonica,--the
well-kept road, along whose sides two little paved channels conducted
the water,--the flower-plats at intervals in the smooth emerald turf,
were all assurances of care and propriety; and as Layton marked them, he
muttered, "This is one of the lucky ones."

As Layton moved on with laggard step, he halted frequently to mark some
new device or other of ornamental gardening. Now it was a tasteful group
of rock-work, over which gracefully creepers hung in festoons; now it
was a little knot of flowering shrubs, so artfully intermingled as to
seem as though growing from a single stem; now a tiny fishpond could be
descried through the foliage; even the rustic seats, placed at points of
commanding view, seemed to say how much the whole scene had been planned
for enjoyment, and that every tint of foliage, every undulation of the
sward, every distant glimpse caught through a narrow vista, had all been
artful