d to and confronted with, you had died of starvation, despite all
your wise saws on thrift and providence.'

"'Gracious mercy!' muttered he, 'can this be--' and then he stopped;
and beckoning me to follow him into an inner room, he retired.

"'Do I speak to Dr. Layton?' asked he, curtly, when we were alone.

"'I was that man,' said I. 'I am nothing now.'

"'By what unhappy causes have you come to this?'

"'The lack of that same thrift you were so eloquent about, perhaps. I
was one of those who could write, speak, invent, and discover; but I
was never admitted a brother of the guild of those who save. The world,
however, has always its compensations, and I met thrifty men. Some
of them stole my writings, and some filched my discoveries. They have
prospered, and live to illustrate your pleasant theory. But I have not
come here to make my confessions; I would learn of you certain things
about what was once my home.'

"He was most kind,--he would have been more than kind to me had I let
him; but I would accept of nothing. 'I did not even break bread under
his roof, though I had fasted for a day and a half. He had a few objects
left with him to give me, which I took,--the old pocket-book one of
them,--and then I went away."

The old man's narrative was henceforth one long series of struggles
with fortune. He concealed none of those faults by which he had so often
wrecked his better life. Hating and despising the companionship to which
his reduced condition had brought him, he professed to believe there was
less degradation in drunkenness than in such association. Through all
he said, in fact, there was the old defiant spirit of early days, a
scornful rejection of all assistance, and even, in failure and misery,
a self-reliance that seemed invincible. He had come to America by the
invitation of a theatrical manager, who had failed, leaving him in the
direst necessity and want.

The dawn of day found him still telling of his wayward life, its
sorrows, its struggles, and defeats.

CHAPTER XLVI. THE DOCTOR'S NARRATIVE

Old Layton never questioned his son whither they were going, or for
what, till the third day of their journeying together. Such, indeed, was
the preoccupation of his mind, that he travelled along unmindful of new
places and new people, all his thoughts deeply engaged by one single
theme, Brief as this interval was, what a change had it worked in his
appearance! Instead of the wild and haggard look