Thus self-accusing and self-disparaging, he reached the little avenue gate, which by a trim gravel walk led up to the parsonage. The neat lodge, with its rustic porch, all overgrown with a rich japonica,--the well-kept road, along whose sides two little paved channels conducted the water,--the flower-plats at intervals in the smooth emerald turf, were all assurances of care and propriety; and as Layton marked them, he muttered, “This is one of the lucky ones.” As Layton moved on with laggard step, he halted frequently to mark some new device or other of ornamental gardening. Now it was a tasteful group of rock-work, over which gracefully creepers hung in festoons; now it was a little knot of flowering shrubs, so artfully intermingled as to seem as though growing from a single stem; now a tiny fishpond could be descried through the foliage; even the rustic seats, placed at points of commanding view, seemed to say how much the whole scene had been planned for enjoyment, and that every tint of foliage, every undulation of the sward, every distant glimpse caught through a narrow vista, had all been artfully contrived to yield its share of pleasure. “I wonder,” muttered he, bitterly, to himself,--“I wonder when this man preaches on a Sunday against wealth and its temptations, reminding others that out of this world men take nothing, but go out upon their new pilgrimage naked and poor, does he ever turn a thought to all these things, so beautiful now, and with that vitality that will make them beautiful years and years after he himself has become dust? I have little doubt,” added he, hurriedly, “that he says all this, and believes it too. Here am I, after just as many determinations to eat no man's salt, nor sit down to any board better than my own,--here I am to-day creeping like a poor parasite to a great man's table,--ay, he is a great man to _me!_ “How strange is the casuistry, too, with which humble people like myself persuade themselves that they go into the world against their will; that they do so purely from motives of policy, forgetting all the while how ignoble is the motive they lay claim to. “The old Roman moralist told us that poverty had no heavier infliction in its train than that it made men ridiculous, but I tell him he is wrong. It makes men untrue to themselves, false to their own hearts, enemies to their own convictions, doing twenty things every day of their lives that they affect to deem prudent, and know to be contemptible. I wish my worthy host had left me unnoticed!” He was at last at the door, and rang the bell with the impatient boldness of one chafing and angry with himself. There was a short delay, for the servants were all engaged in the dining-room, and Layton rang again. “Dr. Millar at home?” asked he, sternly, of the well-powdered footman who stood before him. “Yes, sir; he's at dinner.” “At dinner! I was invited to dinner!”