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As the steamer left the wharf he noticed a manded her, the chaplain who exhorted her, the woman near him who had shown a singular hes-reporter who exhibited her in print-never knew. itation in embarking, and who had been the last It was recorded of her with surprise that, though of the passengers to take her place in the vessel. most respectably dressed, she had nevertheless She was neatly dressed in black silk, with a red described herself as being "in distress." Paisley shawl over her shoulders, and she kept had expressed the deepest contrition, but had her face hidden behind a thick veil. Arthur persisted in giving a name which was on the Blanchard was struck by the rare grace and ele- | face of it a false one; in telling a commonplace gance of her figure, and he felt a young man's story which was manifestly an invention; and passing curiosity to see her face. She neither in refusing to the last to furnish any clew to her lifted her veil nor turned her head his way. Aft- friends. A lady connected with a charitable er taking a few steps hesitatingly backward and institution ("interested by her extreme elegance forward on the deck, she walked away on a sud- and beauty") had volunteered to take charge of den to the stern of the vessel. In a minute her, and to bring her into a better frame of more there was a cry of alarm from the man at mind. The first day's experience of the penithe helm, and the engines were stopped imme- tent had been far from cheering, and the secdiately. The woman had thrown herself over- ond day's experience had been conclusive. She board. had left the institution by stealth; and-though the visiting clergyman, taking a special interest in the case, had caused special efforts to be made —all search after her from that time forth had proved fruitless.

While this useless investigation (undertaken at Allan's express desire) was in progress the lawyer had settled the preliminary formalities connected with the succession of the property. All that remained was for the new master of Thorpe-Ambrose to decide when he would personally establish himself on the estate of which he was now the legal possessor.

The passengers all rushed to the side of the vessel to look. Arthur Blanchard alone, without an instant's hesitation, jumped into the river. He was an excellent swimmer, and he reached the woman as she rose again to the surface after sinking for the first time. Help was at hand, and they were both brought safely ashore. The woman was taken to the nearest police-station, and was soon restored to her senses; her preserver giving his name and address, as usual in such cases, to the inspector on duty, who wisely recommended him to get into a warm bath, and to send to his lodgings for dry clothes. Arthur Left necessarily to his own guidance in this Blanchard, who had never known an hour's ill-matter, Allan settled it for himself in his usual ness since he was a child, laughed at the cau- hot-headed, generous way. He positively detion, and went back in a cab. The next day clined to take possession until Mrs. Blanchard he was too ill to attend the examination before and her niece (who had been permitted, thus the magistrate. A fortnight afterward he was far, as a matter of courtesy, to remain in their a dead man. old home) had recovered from the calamity that The news of the calamity reached Henry had befallen them, and were fit to decide for Blanchard and his son at Milan; and within themselves what their future proceedings should an hour of the time when they received it they be. A private correspondence followed this reswere on their way back to England. The snowolution, comprehending, on Allan's side, unlimon the Alps had loosened earlier than usual that ited offers of every thing he had to give (in a year, and the passes were notoriously danger- house which he had not yet seen); and, on the ous. The father and son, traveling in their ladies' side, a discreetly reluctant readiness to own carriage, were met on the mountain by the profit by the young gentleman's generosity in mail returning, after sending the letters on by the matter of time. To the astonishment of hand. Warnings which would have produced his legal advisers, Allan entered their office one their effect under any ordinary circumstances morning, accompanied by Mr. Brock, and anwere now vainly addressed to the two English-nounced, with perfect composure, that the lamen. Their impatience to be at home again, dies had been good enough to take his own arafter the catastrophe which had befallen their rangements off his hands, and that, in deference family, brooked no delay. Bribes lavishly of- to their convenience, he meant to defer estabfered to the postillions tempted them to go on.lishing himself at Thorpe-Ambrose till that day The carriage pursued its way, and was lost to view in the mist. When it was seen again it was disinterred from the bottom of a precipicethe men, the horses, and the vehicle all crushed together under the wreck and ruin of an avalanche.

So the three lives were mown down by death. So, in a clear sequence of events, a woman's suicide-leap into a river had opened to Allan Armadale the succession to the Thorpe-Am

brose estates.

Who was the woman? The man who saved her life never knew. The magistrate who re

two months. The lawyers stared at Allan, and Allan, returning the compliment, stared at the lawyers.

"What on earth are you wondering at, gentlemen?" he inquired, with a boyish bewilderment in his good-humored blue eyes. "Why shouldn't I give the ladies their two months if the ladies want them? Let the poor things take their own time, and welcome. My rights? and my position? Oh, pooh! pooh! I'm in no hurry to be squire of the parish-it's not in my way. What do I mean to do for the two months? What I should have done any how, whether the

ladies had staid or not; I mean to go cruising at sea. That's what I like! I've got a new yacht at home in Somersetshire-a yacht of my own building. And I'll tell you what, Sir," continued Allan, seizing the head partner by the arm in the fervor of his friendly intentions, "you look sadly in want of a holiday in the fresh air, and you shall come along with me on the trial-trip of my new vessel. And your partners too, if they like. And the head clerk, who is the best fellow I ever met with in my life. Plenty of room-we'll all shake down together on the floor, and we'll give Mr. Brock a rug on the cabin table. Thorpe-Ambrose be hanged! Do you mean to say if you had built a vessel yourself (as I have) you would go to any estate in the three kingdoms, while your own little beauty was sitting like a duck on the water at home, and waiting for you to try her? You legal gentlemen are great hands at argument. What do you think of that argument? I think it's unanswerable-and I'm off to Somersetshire

to-morrow."

With those words the new possessor of eight thousand a year dashed into the head clerk's office, and invited that functionary to a cruise on the high seas, with a smack on the shoulder which was heard distinctly by his masters in the next room. The Firm looked in interrogative wonder at Mr. Brock. A client who, could see a position among the landed gentry of England waiting for him, without being in a hurry to occupy it at the earliest possible opportunity, was a client of whom they possessed no previous experience.

"He must have been very oddly brought up," said the lawyers to the rector. "Very oddly," said the rector to the lawyers.

A last leap over one month more brought Mr. Brock to the present time-to the bedroom at Castletown, in which he was sitting thinking, and to the anxiety which was obstinately intruding itself between him and his night's rest. That anxiety was no unfamiliar enemy to the rector's peace of mind. It had first found him out in Somersetshire six months since, and it had now followed him to the Isle of Man under the inveterately-obtrusive form of Ozias Midwinter.

The change in Allan's future prospects had worked no corresponding alteration in his perverse fancy for the castaway at the village inn. In the midst of the consultations with the lawyers he had found time to visit Midwinter; and on the journey back with the rector there was Allan's friend in the carriage, returning with them to Somersetshire by Allan's own invitation. The ex-usher's hair had grown again on his shaven skull, and his dress showed the renovating influence of an accession of pecuniary means; but in all other respects the man was unchanged. He met Mr. Brock's distrust with the old uncomplaining resignation to it; he maintained the same suspicious silence on the subject of his relatives and his early life; he spoke of Allan's

kindness to him with the same undisciplined fervor of gratitude and surprise. "I have done what I could, Sir," he said to Mr. Brock, while Allan was asleep in the railway carriage. "I have kept out of Mr. Armadale's way, and I have not even answered his last letter to me. More than that is more than I can do. I don't ask you to consider my own feeling toward the only human creature who has never suspected and never ill-treated me. I can resist my own feeling, but I can't resist the young gentleman himself. There's not another like him in the world. If we are to be parted again, it must be his doing or yours-not mine. The dog's master has whistled," said this strange man, with a momentary outburst of the hidden passion in him, and a sudden springing of angry tears in his wild brown eyes: "and it's hard, Sir, to blame the dog when the dog comes."

Once more Mr. Brock's humanity got the better of Mr. Brock's caution. He determined to wait, and see what the coming days of social intercourse might bring forth.

The days passed; the yacht was rigged and fitted for sea; a cruise was arranged to the Welsh coast-and Midwinter the Secret was the same Midwinter still. Confinement on board a little vessel of five-and-thirty tons offered no great attraction to a man of Mr. Brock's time of life. But he sailed on the trial trip of the yacht nevertheless, rather than trust Allan alone with his new friend.

self.

Would the close companionship of the three on their cruise tempt the man into talking of his own affairs? No; he was ready enough on other subjects, especially if Allan led the way to them. But not a word escaped him about himMr. Brock tried him with questions about his recent inheritance, and was answered as he had been answered once already at the Somersetshire inn. It was curious coincidence, Midwinter admitted, that Mr. Armadale's prospects and his own prospects should both have unexpectedly changed for the better about the same time. But there the resemblance ended. It was no large fortune that had fallen into his lap, though it was enough for his wants. It had not reconciled him with his relations, for the money had not come to him as a matter of kindness but as a matter of right. As for the circumstance which had led to his communicating with his family it was not worth mentioning, seeing that the temporary renewal of intercourse which had followed had produced no friendly results. Nothing had come of it but the money-and, with the money, an anxiety which troubled him sometimes, when he woke in the small hours of the morning.

At those last words he became suddenly silent, as if, for once, his well-guarded tongue had betrayed him. Mr. Brock seized the opportunity, and bluntly asked him what the nature of the anxiety might be. Did it relate to money? No; it related to a Letter which had been waiting for him for many years. the letter? Not yet; it had been left under

Had he received

setshire waiting for him at the hotel. It had been brought there by Midwinter, and it contained news which entirely overthrew all Mr. Brock's holiday plans. The clergyman who had undertaken to do duty for him in his absence had been unexpectedly summoned home again; and Mr. Brock had no choice (the day of the week being Friday) but to cross the next morning from Douglas to Liverpool, and get back by railway on Saturday night in time for Sunday's service.

charge of one of the partners in the firm which | On the fifth day he found a letter from Somerhad managed the business of his inheritance for him; the partner had been absent from England; and the letter, locked up among his own private papers, could not be got at till he returned. He was expected back toward the latter part of that present May, and if Midwinter could be sure where the cruise would take them to at the close of the month, he thought he would write and have the letter forwarded. Had he any family reasons to be anxious about it? None that he knew of; he was curious to see what had been waiting for him for many years, and that was all. So he answered the rector's questions, with his tawny face turned away over the low bulwark of the yacht, and his fishing-line dragging in his supple brown hands.

Having read his letter, and resigned himself to his altered circumstances as patiently as he might, the rector passed next to a question that pressed for serious consideration in its turn. Burdened with his heavy responsibility toward Allan, and conscious of his own undiminished distrust of Allan's new friend, how was he to act in the emergency that now beset him toward the two young men who had been his companions on the cruise?

Favored by wind and weather, the little vessel had done wonders on her trial-trip. Before the period fixed for the duration of the cruise had half expired the yacht was as high up on the Welsh coast as Holyhead; and Allan, eager for adventure in unknown regions, had declared Mr. Brock had first asked himself that awkboldly for an extension of the voyage northward ward question the Friday afternoon; and he to the Isle of Man. Having ascertained from was still trying, vainly, to answer it, alone in reliable authority that the weather really prom-his own room, at one o'clock on the Saturday ised well for a cruise in that quarter, and that, morning. It was then only the end of May, in the event of any unforeseen necessity for re- and the residence of the ladies at Thorpe-Amturn, the railway was accessible by the steamer brose (unless they chose to shorten it of their from Douglas to Liverpool, Mr. Brock agreed own accord) would not expire till the middle to his pupil's proposal. By that night's post he of June. Even if the repairs of the yacht had wrote to Allan's lawyers and to his own rectory, been completed (which was not the case), there indicating Douglas in the Isle of Man as the was no possible pretense for hurrying Allan back next address to which letters might be forwarded. to Somersetshire. But one other alternative reAt the post-office he met Midwinter, who had mained—to leave him where he was. In other just dropped a letter into the box. Remember- words, to leave him, at the turning-point of his ing what he had said on board the yacht, Mr. life, under the sole influence of a man whom Brock concluded that they had both taken the he had first met with as a castaway at a village same precaution, and had ordered their corre-inn, and who was still, to all practical purposes, spondence to be forwarded to the same place. a total stranger to him. Late the next day they set sail for the Isle of Man. For a few hours all went well; but sunset brought with it the signs of a coming change. With the darkness the wind rose to a gale; and the question whether Allan and his journeymen had, or had not, built a stout seaboat was seriously tested for the first time. All that night, after trying vainly to bear up for Holyhead, the little vessel kept the sea, and stood her trial bravely. The next morning the Isle of Man was in view, and the yacht was safe at Castletown. A survey by daylight of hull and rigging showed that all the damage done might be set right again in a week's time. The cruising party had accordingly remained at Castletown; Allan being occupied in superintending the repairs, Mr. Brock in exploring the neighborhood, and Midwinter in making daily pilgrimages on foot, to Douglas and back, to inquire for letters.

The first of the cruising party who received a letter was Allan. "More worries from those everlasting lawyers," was all he said, when he had read the letter, and had crumpled it up in his pocket. The rector's turn came next before the week's sojourn at Castletown had expired.

In despair of obtaining any better means of enlightenment to guide his decision, Mr. Brock reverted to the impression which Midwinter had produced on his own mind in the familiarity of the eruise.

Young as he was the ex-usher had evidently lived a wild and varied life. He had seen and observed more than most of men of twice his age; his talk showed a strange mixture of sense and absurdity-of vehement earnestness at one time, and fantastic humor at another. He could speak of books like a man who had really enjoyed them; he could take his turn at the helm like a sailor who knew his duty; he could sing, and tell stories, and cook, and climb the rigging, and lay the cloth for dinner, with an odd satirical delight in the exhibition of his own dexterity. The display of these, and other qualities like them, as his spirits rose with the cruise, had revealed the secret of his attraction for Allan plainly enough. But had all disclosures rested there? Had the man let no chance light in on his character in the rector's presence? Very little; and that little did not set him forth in a morally alluring aspect. His way in the world had lain evidently in doubtful

like leaving Mr. Armadale alone with a stranger like me."

Startled as he was, Mr. Brock saw the serious necessity of being plain with a man who had come at that time, and had said those words to him.

"You have guessed right," he answered. "I stand in the place of a father to Allan Armadale, and I am naturally unwilling to leave him, at his age, with a man whom I don't know."

Ozias Midwinter took a step forward to the table. His wandering eyes rested on the rector's New Testament, which was one of the objects lying on it.

places; familiarity with the small villainies of vagabonds peeped out of him now and then; words occasionally slipped off his tongue with an unpleasantly strong flavor about them; and, more significant still, he habitually slept the light suspicious sleep of a man who has been accustomed to close his eyes in doubt of the company under the same roof with him. Down to the very latest moment of the rector's experience of him-down to that present Friday nighthis conduct had been persistently secret and unaccountable to the very last. After bringing Mr. Brock's letter to the hotel, he had mysteriously disappeared from the house without leaving any message for his companions, and "You have read that Book, in the years of without letting any body see whether he had, or a long life, to many congregations," he said. had not, received a letter himself. At night-"Has it taught you mercy to your miserable fall he had come back stealthily in the darkness fellow-creatures ?" -had been caught on the stairs by Allan, eager to tell him of the change in the rector's planshad listened to the news without a word of remark-and had ended by sulkily locking himself into his own room. What was there in his favor to set against such revelations of his character as these against his wandering eyes, his obstinate reserve with the rector, his ominous silence on the subject of family and friends? Little or nothing: the sum of all his merits began and ended with his gratitude to Allan.

Mr. Brock left his seat on the side of the bed, trimmed his candle, and, still lost in his own thoughts, looked out absently at the night. The change of place brought no new ideas with it. His retrospect over his own past life had amply satisfied him that his present sense of responsibility rested on no merely fanciful grounds; and having brought him to that point, had left him there, standing at the window, and seeing nothing but the total darkness in his own mind faithfully reflected by the total darkness of the night.

"If I only had a friend to apply to!" thought the rector. "If I could only find some one to

help me in this miserable place!"

At the moment when the aspiration crossed his mind it was suddenly answered by a low knock at the door, and a voice said softly in the passage outside," Let me come in."

After an instant's pause to steady his nerves Mr. Brock opened the door, and found himself at one o'clock in the morning standing face to face on the threshold of his own bedroom with Ozias Midwinter.

"Are you ill?" asked the rector, as soon as his astonishment would allow him to speak.

"I have come here to make a clean breast of it!" was the strange answer. "Will you let me in ?"

With those words he walked into the roomhis eyes on the ground, his lips ashy pale, and his hand holding something hidden behind him. "I saw the light under your door," he went on, without looking up, and without moving his hand; "and I know the trouble on your mind which is keeping you from your rest. You are going away to-morrow morning, and you don't VOL. XXX.-No. 176.-Q

Without waiting to be answered, he looked Mr. Brock in the face for the first time, and brought his hidden hand slowly into view.

'Read that," he said; "and, for Christ's sake, pity me when you know who I am." He laid a letter of many pages on the table. It was the letter that Mr. Neal had posted at Wildbad nineteen years since.

AN AMERICAN WAR CORRE-
SPONDENT IN ENGLAND.
HE boy's vague dream of foreign adventure

tamer and more practical cast; it was resolved to this problem: "How could I travel abroad and pay my expenses?"

Evidently no money could be made by home correspondence. The new order of journals had no charity for fine moral descriptions of church steeples, ruined castles, and picture galleries; I knew too little of foreign politics to give the republic its semi-weekly "sensation;" and exchange was too high at the depreciated value of currency to yield me even a tolerable reward. But might I not reverse the policy of the peripatetics, and, instead of turning my European experiences into American gold, make my knowledge of America a bill of credit for England?

What capital had I for this essay? I was twenty-one years of age; the last three years of my minority had been passed among the newspapers; I knew indifferently well the distribution of parties, the theory of the government, the personalities of public men, the causes of the great civil strife. And I had mounted to my saddle in the beginning of the war, and followed the armies of M'Clellan and Pope over their sanguinary battle-fields. The possibility thrilled me, like a novel discovery, that the old world might be willing to hear of the new as I could depict it, fresh from the theatre of action. At great expense foreign correspondents had been sent to our shores whose ignorance and confidence had led them into egregious blunders; for their traveling outlay merely, I would have guaranteed thrice the information, and my sanguine conceit half persuaded me that I could

present it as acceptably. der upon this suggestion. ond action of Bull Run growled a farewell to me as I resigned my horse and equipments to a successor. With a trifle more money than that with which Bayard Taylor set out, I took pas-pressiveness of greatness. As I walked on the sage on a steamer, and landed at Liverpool on the 1st of October, 1862.

I did not wait to pon- | had been engaged for me, and waiters in white The guns of the sec- aprons, standing in rows, bowed me over the portal. The servant girls and gossips had fugitive peeps at me through the cracks of my door, and I felt for the first time all the op

quay where the crowds were strolling, looking out upon the misty sea, at the donkeys on the beach, and at the fishing smacks huddled un

Among my acquaintances upon the ship had been a semi-literary adventurer from New En-der the far-reaching pier, I saw my name in huge gland. I surmised that his funds were not more letters borne on the banner of a bill-poster, and considerable than my own; and indeed, when he all the people stopping to read as he wound in comprehended my plans, he confessed as much, and out among them. and proposed to join enterprises with me.

"Did you ever make a public lecture?" he asked.

Now I had certain blushing recollections of having entertained a suburban congregation, long before, with didactic critiques upon Byron, Keats, and the popular poets. I replied, therefore, misgivingly, in the affirmative, and Hipp, the interrogator, exclaimed at once:

"Let us make a lecturing tour in England, and divide the expenses and the work; you will describe the war, and I will act as your agent."

With true Yankee persistence Hipp developed his idea, and I consented to try the experiment, though with grave scruples. It would require much nerve to talk to strange people upon an excitable topic; and a camp fever, which among other things I had gained on the Chickahominy, had enfeebled me to the last degree.

However, I went to work at once, inditing the pages in a snug parlor of a modest Liverpool inn, while Hipp sounded the patrons and landlord as to the probable success of our adventure. Opinions differed; public lectures in the old world had been generally gratuitous, except in rare cases, but the genial Irish proprietor of the Post advised me to go on without hesitation.

We selected for the initial night a Lancashire sea-side town, a summer resort for the people of Liverpool, and filled at that time with invalids and pleasure-seekers. Hipp, who was a sort of American Crichton, managed the business details with consummate tact. I was announced as the eye-witness and participator of a hundred actions, fresh from the bloodiest fields and still smelling of saltpetre. My horse had been shot as I carried a General's orders under the fire of a score of batteries, and I was connected with journals whose reputations were world-wide. Disease had compelled me to forsake the scenes of my heroism, and I had consented to enlighten the Lancashire public, through the solicitation of the nobility and gentry. Some of the latter had indeed honored the affair with their patronage.

We secured the three village newspapers by writing them descriptive letters. The parish rector and the dissenting preachers were waited upon and presented with family tickets; while we placarded the town till it was scarcely recognizable to the oldest inhabitant.

On the morning of the eventful day I arrived in the place. The best room of the best inn

How few thought the thin, sallow young man, in wide breeches and square-toed boots, who shambled by them so shamefacedly, to be the veritable Mentor who had crossed the ocean for their benefit. Indeed the embarrassing responsibility I had assumed now appeared to me in all its vividness.

My confidence sensibly declined; my sensi tiveness amounted to nervousness; I had half a mind to run away and leave the show entirely to Hipp. But when I saw that child of the Mayflower stolidly, shrewdly going about his business, working the wires like an old operator, making the largest amount of thunder from so small a cloud, I was rebuked of my faintheartedness. In truth, not the least of my misgivings was Hipp's extraordinary zeal. He gave the townsmen to understand that I was a prodigy of oratory, whose battle-sketches would harrow up their souls and thrill them like a martial summons. It brought the blush to my face to see him talking to knots of old men after the fashion of a town-crier at a puppet-booth, and I wondered whether I occupied a more reputable rank, after all, than a strolling gymnast, giant, or dwarf.

As the twilight came on my position became ludicrously unenviable. The lights in the townhall were lit. I passed pallidly twice or thrice, and would have given half my fortune if the whole thing had been over. But the minutes went on; the interval diminished: I faced the crisis at last and entered the arena.

There sat Hipp, taking money at the head of the stairs, with piles of tickets before him; and as he rose, gravely respectful, the janitor and some loiterers took off their hats while I passed. I entered the little bare dressing-room; my throat was parched as fever, my hands were hot and tremulous; I felt my heart sag. How the rumble of expectant feet in the audience-room shook me! I called myself a poltroon, and fingered my neck-tie, and smoothed my hair before the mirror. Another burst of impatient expectation made me start: I opened the door, and stood before my destiny.

The place was about one-third filled with a representative English audience, the males preponderating in number. They watched me intently as I mounted the steps of the rostrum and arranged my port-folio upon a musical tripod; then I seated myself for a moment, and tried to still the beating of my foolish heart.

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