“Give me a corner for my glass bottles and a furnace, and I 'm your man,” said Layton, laughingly.
“You shall make a laboratory of anything but the dinner-room,” cried Holmes, shaking hands on the compact, and thus sealing it.
The guard's horn soon after summoned them to their places, and they once more were on the road.
The men who have long waged a hand-to-hand combat with fortune, unfriended and uncheered, experience an intense enjoyment when comes the moment in which they can pour out all their sorrows and their selfishness into some confiding ear. It is no ordinary pleasure with them to taste the sympathy of a willing listener. Layton felt all the ecstasy of such a moment, and he told not alone of himself and his plans and his hopes, but of his son Alfred,—what high gifts the youth possessed, and how certain was he, if common justice should be but accorded to him, to win a great place in the world's estimation.
“The Captain” was an eager listener to all the other said, and never interrupted, save to throw in some passing word of encouragement, some cheering exhortation to bear up bravely and courageously.
Layton's heart warmed with the words of encouragement, and he confided many a secret source of hope that he had never revealed before. He told how, in the course of his labors, many an unexpected discovery had burst upon him,—now some great fact applicable to the smelting of metals, now some new invention available to agriculture. They were subjects, he owned, he had not pursued to any perfect result, but briefly committed to some rough notes, reserving them for a time of future leisure.
“And if I cannot convince the world,” said he, laughingly, “that they have neglected and ignored a great genius, I hope, at least, to make you a convert to that opinion.”
“You see those tall elms yonder?” said Holmes, as they drew nigh Dublin. “Well, screened beneath their shade lies the little cottage I have told you about. Quiet and obscure enough now, but I 'm greatly mistaken if it will not one day be remembered as the spot where Herbert Layton lived when he brought his great discovery to completion.”
“Do you really think so?” cried Layton, with a swelling feeling about the heart as though it would burst his side. “Oh, if I could only come to feel that hope myself! How it would repay me for all I have gone through! How it would reconcile me to my own heart!”