family consisted of his wife and a single
servant, and who, from the day of his first arrival, showed a
decided repugnance to forming acquaintance with any, or holding other
intercourse with his neighbors than what the cares of his profession
required. In person he was tall, and even stately; his features those
of a man once handsome, but now disfigured by two red blotches over the
eyes, and a tremulousness of the nether lip, indications of long
years of dissipation, which his watery eye and shaking hand abundantly
confirmed. Either, too, from a consciousness of his infirmity, or
a shame not less deeply rooted, he never met the eyes of those he
addressed, but turned his gaze either askance or to the ground, giving
him then an expression very different from the look he wore when alone
and unobserved. At such times the face was handsome but haughty, a
character of almost defiant pride in the eye, while the angles of
the mouth were slightly drawn down, as one sees in persons of proud
temperament. A few words will suffice for so much of his history as the
reader need know. Herbert Layton had the proud distinction of being a
Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, at the age of twenty-one, and, three
years later, won, against many distinguished competitors, the chair
of medicine in the university. His whole academic career had been a
succession of triumphs, and even able men made this excuse for not
obtaining honors, that they were "in Layton's division." His was one of
those rare natures to which acquirements the most diverse and opposite
are easy. The most critical knowledge of the classics was combined in
him with a high-soaring acquaintance with science, and while he carried
away the gold medal for verse composition, the very same week announced
him as prizeman for microscopic researches. And while he thus swept the
college of honors, he was ever foremost in all athletic games and manly
exercises. Indeed, the story goes that the gown in which he won his
fellowship had been hastily thrown over the jacket of the cricketer. If
the blemish served to afflict those who felt the truest friendship for
him, it rather contributed to exaggerate the prestige of his name that
he was haughty and even overbearing in manner; not meanly condescending
to be vain of his successes and the high eminence he had won,--far from
it, no man treated such triumphs with such supercilious levity, boldly
declaring that they were within the reach of all, and