ere are we? We have lost ourselves again. Oh, I remember--money. What
I can't beat into my thick head," concluded Allan, quite unconscious
that he was preaching socialist doctrines to a clergyman; "is the
meaning of the fuss that's made about giving money away. Why can't the
people who have got money to spare give it to the people who haven't got
money to spare, and make things pleasant and comfortable all the world
over in that way? You're always telling me to cultivate ideas, Mr. Brock
There's an idea, and, upon my life, I don't think it's a bad one."

Mr. Brock gave his pupil a good-humored poke with the end of his stick.
"Go back to your yacht," he said. "All the little discretion you have
got in that flighty head of yours is left on board in your tool-chest.
How that lad will end," pursued the rector, when he was left by himself,
"is more than any human being can say. I almost wish I had never taken
the responsibility of him on my shoulders."

Three weeks passed before the stranger with the uncouth name was
pronounced to be at last on the way to recovery.

During this period Allan had made regular inquiries at the inn, and, as
soon as the sick man was allowed to see visitors, Allan was the first
who appeared at his bedside. So far Mr. Brock's pupil had shown no more
than a natural interest in one of the few romantic circumstances
which had varied the monotony of the village life: he had committed
no imprudence, and he had exposed himself to no blame. But as the
days passed, young Armadale's visits to the inn began to lengthen
considerably, and the surgeon (a cautious elderly man) gave the rector a
private hint to bestir himself. Mr. Brock acted on the hint immediately,
and discovered that Allan had followed his usual impulses in his usual
headlong way. He had taken a violent fancy to the castaway usher and had
invited Ozias Midwinter to reside permanently in the neighborhood in the
new and interesting character of his bosom friend.

Before Mr. Brock could make up his mind how to act in this emergency, he
received a note from Allan's mother, begging him to use his privilege as
an old friend, and to pay her a visit in her room.

He found Mrs. Armadale suffering under violent nervous agitation, caused
entirely by a recent interview with her son. Allan had been sitting with
her all the morning, and had talked of nothing but his new friend. The
man with the horrible name (as poor Mrs. Armadale described him) had
que