witness it. In fact, he wanted
to disassociate his friend from any pain failure should occasion, and
bear all alone the sorrows of defeat.

Besides this, he felt that, however personally painful the ordeal, he
was bound to face it. He had accepted Quackinboss's assistance under the
distinct pledge that he was to try this career. In its success was he to
find the means of repaying his friend; and so confidently had the
Colonel always talked of that success, it would seem mere wilfulness not
to attempt it.

There is not, perhaps, a more painful position in life than to be
obliged to essay a career to which all one's thoughts and instincts are
opposed; to do something against which self-respect revolts, and yet
meet no sympathy from others,--to be conscious that any backwardness
will be construed into self-indulgence, and disinclination be set down
as indolence. Now this was Alfred Layton's case. He must either risk a
signal failure, or consent to be thought of as one who would rather be a
burden to his friends than make an honorable effort for his own support.
He was already heavily in the Colonel's debt; the thought of this
weighed upon him almost insupportably. It never quitted him for an
instant; and, worse than all, it obtruded through every effort he made
to acquit himself of the obligation; and only they who have experienced
it can know what pain brain labor becomes when it is followed amidst the
cares and anxieties of precarious existence; when the student tries
in vain to concentrate thoughts that _will_ stray away to the miserable
exigencies of his lot, or struggle hopelessly to forget himself and his
condition in the interest of bygone events or unreal incidents. Let none
begrudge him the few flitting moments of triumph he may win, for he has
earned them by many a long hour of hardship!

The sense of his utter loneliness, often depressing and dispiriting, was
now a sort of comfort to him. Looking to nothing but defeat, he was
glad that there was none to share in his sorrows. Of all the world, he
thought poor Clara alone would pity him. Her lot was like his own,--the
same friendlessness, the self-same difficulty. Why should he not have
her sympathy? She would give it freely and with her whole heart. It was
but to tell her, "I am far away and unhappy. I chafe under dependence,
and I know not how to assert my freedom. I would do something, and yet
I know not what it is to be. I distrust myself, and yet there are