n the
instant I came to it, and which has forced from me the narrative that
these pages contain.

"I now know what never even entered my mind as a suspicion till the
letter reached me. I now know that the widow of the man whose death lies
at my door has borne a posthumous child. That child is a boy--a year
older than my own son. Secure in her belief in my death, his mother
has done what my son's mother did: she has christened her child by his
father's name. Again, in the second generation, there are two Allan
Armadales as there were in the first. After working its deadly mischief
with the fathers, the fatal resemblance of names has descended to work
its deadly mischief with the sons.

"Guiltless minds may see nothing thus far but the result of a series of
events which could lead no other way. I--with that man's life to answer
for--I, going down into my grave, with my crime unpunished and unatoned,
see what no guiltless minds can discern. I see danger in the future,
begotten of the danger in the past--treachery that is the offspring of
_his_ treachery, and crime that is the child of _my_ crime. Is the dread
that now shakes me to the soul a phantom raised by the superstition of a
dying man? I look into the Book which all Christendom venerates, and the
Book tells me that the sin of the father shall be visited on the child.
I look out into the world, and I see the living witnesses round me to
that terrible truth. I see the vices which have contaminated the father
descending, and contaminating the child; I see the shame which has
disgraced the father's name descending, and disgracing the child's. I
look in on myself, and I see my crime ripening again for the future
in the self-same circumstance which first sowed the seeds of it in the
past, and descending, in inherited contamination of evil, from me to my
son."

At those lines the writing ended. There the stroke had struck him, and
the pen had dropped from his hand.

He knew the place; he remembered the words. At the instant when the
reader's voice stopped, he looked eagerly at the doctor. "I have
got what comes next in my mind," he said, with slower and slower
articulation. "Help me to speak it."

The doctor administered a stimulant, and signed to Mr. Neal to give him
time. After a little delay, the flame of the sinking spirit leaped up
in his eyes once more. Resolutely struggling with his failing speech,
he summoned the Scotchman to take the pen, and pronounced the