r see fruit or blossom more.
That's just the very thing you 're a-doin'.You ain't satisfied to be
active and thrivin' and healthful, but you must go a-specu-latin' about
why you are this, and why you ain't t' other. Get work to do, sir, and
do it."

"It is what I intend," said Layton, in a low voice.

"There ain't nothing like labor," said Quackinboss, with energy; "work
keeps the devil out of a man's mind, for somehow there's nothing that
black fellow loves like loafing. And whenever I see a great,
tall, well-whiskered chap leaning over a balcony in a grand silk
dressing-gown, with a gold stitched cap on his head, and he a-yawning,
I say to myself, 'Maybe I don't know _who 's_ at your elbow now;' and
when I see one of our strapping Western fellows, as he has given the
last stroke of his hatchet to a pine-tree, and stands back to let it
fall, wiping the honest sweat from his brow, as his eyes turn upward
over the tree-tops to something higher than them, I say to my heart,
'All right, there; he knows who it was gave him the strength to lay
that sixty-foot stem so low.'"

"You say truly," muttered Layton.

"I know it, sir; I 've been a-loafing myself these last three years,
and I 've run more to seed in that time than in all my previous life;
but I mean to give it up."

"What are your plans?" asked Layton, not sorry to let the conversation
turn away from himself and his own affairs.

"My plans! They are ours, I hope," said Quackinboss. "You're a-coming
out with me to the States, sir. We fixed it all t' other night, I reckon
! I 'm a-goin' to make your fortune; or, better still, to show you how
to make it for yourself."

Layton walked on in moody silence, while Quackinboss, with all the
zealous warmth of conviction, described the triumphs and success he was
to achieve in the New World.

A very few words will suffice to inform our reader of all that he
need know on this subject. During Layton's long convalescence poor
Quackinboss felt his companionable qualities sorely taxed. At first,
indeed, his task was that of consoler, for he had to communicate the
death of Alfred's mother, which occurred in the early days of her
son's illness. The Rector's letter, in conveying the sad tidings, was
everything that kindness and delicacy could dictate, and, with scarcely
a reference to his own share in the benevolence, showed that all care
and attention had waited upon her last hours. The blow, however, was
almost fatal to Lay