I shook my head sadly.

“Did I not tell you that my father was a misanthrope?  He visits no one, unless professionally.  We have no friends and no relations.”

“Humph! that’s awkward.  However, it leaves you free to choose your own friends, when you go back.  A medical man need never be without a visiting connection.  His very profession puts a thousand opportunities in his way.”

“That is true; but—­”

“But what?”

“I am not fond of the profession.  I have never liked it.  I would give much to relinquish it altogether.”

Dalrymple gave utterance to a prolonged and very dismal whistle.

“This,” said he gravely, “is the most serious part of the business.  To live in a dull place is bad enough—­to live with dull people is bad enough; but to have one’s thoughts perpetually occupied with an uncongenial subject, and one’s energies devoted to an uncongenial pursuit, is just misery, and nothing short of it!  In fact ’tis a moral injustice, and one that no man should be required to endure.”

“Yet I must endure it.”

“Why?”

“Because it is too late to do otherwise.”

“It is never too late to repair an evil, or an error.”

“Unless the repairing of it involved a worse evil, or a more fatal error!  No—­I must not dream now of turning aside from the path that has been chosen for me.  Too much time and too much money have been given to the thing for that;—­I must let it take its course.  There’s no help for it!”

“But, confound it, lad! you’d better follow the fife and drum, or go before the mast, than give up your life to a profession you hate!”

“Hate is a strong word,” I replied.  “I do not actually hate it—­at all events I must try to make the best of it, if only for my father’s sake.  His heart is set on making a physician of me, and I dare not disappoint him.”

Dalrymple looked at me fixedly, and then fell back into his old position.

“Heigho!” he said, pulling his hat once more over his eyes, “I was a disobedient son.  My father intended me for the Church; I was expelled from College for fighting a duel before I was twenty, and then, sooner than go home disgraced, enlisted as a private soldier in a cavalry corps bound for foreign service.  Luckily, they found me out before the ship sailed, and made the best of a bad bargain by purchasing me a cornetcy in a dragoon regiment.  I would not advise you to be disobedient, Damon.  My experience in that line has been bitter enough,”

“How so?  You escaped a profession for which you were disinclined, and entered one for which you had every qualification.”

“Ay; but think of the cursed esclandre—­first the duel, then the expulsion, then my disappearance for two months ...  My mother was in bad health at the time, too; and I, her favorite son—­I—­in short, the anxiety was too much for her.  She—­she died before I had been six weeks in the regiment.  There! we won’t talk of it.  It’s the one subject that ...”