edience to his laws, Good may not come. Be true to what Christ
tells you is true. Encourage in yourself, be the circumstances what they
may, all that is loving, all that is grateful, all that is patient, all
that is forgiving, toward your fellow-men. And humbly and trustfully
leave the rest to the God who made you, and to the Saviour who loved you
better than his own life.

"This is the faith in which I have lived, by the Divine help and mercy,
from my youth upward. I ask you earnestly, I ask you confidently, to
make it your faith, too. It is the mainspring of all the good I have
ever done, of all the happiness I have ever known; it lightens my
darkness, it sustains my hope; it comforts and quiets me, lying here,
to live or die, I know not which. Let it sustain, comfort, and enlighten
you. It will help you in your sorest need, as it has helped me in mine.
It will show you another purpose in the events which brought you and
Allan together than the purpose which your guilty father foresaw.
Strange things, I do not deny it, have happened to you already. Stranger
things still may happen before long, which I may not live to see.
Remember, if that time comes, that I died firmly disbelieving in your
influence over Allan being other than an influence for good. The
great sacrifice of the Atonement--I say it reverently--has its mortal
reflections, even in this world. If danger ever threatens Allan, you,
whose father took his father's life--YOU, and no other, may be the man
whom the providence of God has appointed to save him.

"Come to me if I live. Go back to the friend who loves you, whether I
live or die.

"Yours affectionately to the last,

"DECIMUS BROCK."

"'You, and no other, may be the man whom the providence of God has
appointed to save him!'

"Those are the words which have shaken me to the soul. Those are the
words which make me feel as if the dead man had left his grave, and
had put his hand on the place in my heart where my terrible secret lies
hidden from every living creature but myself. One part of the letter
has come true already. The danger that it foresees threatens Armadale at
this moment--and threatens him from Me!

"If the favoring circumstances which have driven me thus far drive me on
to the end, and if that old man's last earthly conviction is prophetic
of the truth, Armadale will escape me, do what I may. And Midwinter will
be the victim who is sacrificed to save his life.

"It is horrible! it