etested or respected
opinion, and instinctively sought to escape a cold shade that mere
sensitiveness would have endured. He could have submitted to separation,
sickness, exile, drudgery, hunger and thirst, with stoical indifference,
but superciliousness was too incisive.

After living on for nine months in attempts to make an income as his
father's successor in the profession--attempts which were utterly
fruitless by reason of his inexperience--Graye came to a simple and
sweeping resolution. They would privately leave that part of England,
drop from the sight of acquaintances, gossips, harsh critics, and bitter
creditors of whose misfortune he was not the cause, and escape the
position which galled him by the only road their great poverty left open
to them--that of his obtaining some employment in a distant place by
following his profession as a humble under-draughtsman.

He thought over his capabilities with the sensations of a soldier
grinding his sword at the opening of a campaign. What with lack of
employment, owing to the decrease of his late father's practice, and the
absence of direct and uncompromising pressure towards monetary results
from a pupil's labour (which seems to be always the case when a
professional man's pupil is also his son), Owen's progress in the art
and science of architecture had been very insignificant indeed. Though
anything but an idle young man, he had hardly reached the age at which
industrious men who lack an external whip to send them on in the world,
are induced by their own common sense to whip on themselves. Hence his
knowledge of plans, elevations, sections, and specifications, was not
greater at the end of two years of probation than might easily have
been acquired in six months by a youth of average ability--himself, for
instance--amid a bustling London practice.

But at any rate he could make himself handy to one of the
profession--some man in a remote town--and there fulfil his indentures.
A tangible inducement lay in this direction of survey. He had a slight
conception of such a man--a Mr. Gradfield--who was in practice in
Budmouth Regis, a seaport town and watering-place in the south of
England.

After some doubts, Graye ventured to write to this gentleman, asking the
necessary question, shortly alluding to his father's death, and stating
that his term of apprenticeship had only half expired. He would be glad
to complete his articles at a very low salary for the whole rem