has been wretchedly neglected. A few notes, written
in such hurry and confusion that I can hardly understand them myself,
are all that I possess to remind me of what has happened since the night
when Armadale's yacht left Naples. Let me try if I can set this right
without more loss or time; let me try if I can recall the circumstances
in their order as they have followed each other from the beginning of
the month.

"On the 3d of November--being then still at Naples--Midwinter received
a hurried letter from Armadale, date 'Messina.' 'The weather,' he said,
'had been lovely, and the yacht had made one of the quickest passages on
record. The crew were rather a rough set to look at; but Captain
Manuel and his English mate' (the latter described as 'the best of good
fellows') 'managed them admirably.' After this prosperous beginning,
Armadale had arranged, as a matter of course, to prolong the cruise;
and, at the sailing-master's suggestion, he had decided to visit some
of the ports in the Adriatic, which the captain had described as full of
character, and well worth seeing.

"A postscript followed, explaining that Armadale had written in a hurry
to catch the steamer to Naples, and that he had opened his letter again,
before sending it off, to add something that he had forgotten. On the
day before the yacht sailed, he had been at the banker's to get 'a few
hundreds in gold,' and he believed he had left his cigar-case there. It
was an old friend of his, and he begged that Midwinter would oblige him
by endeavoring recover it, and keeping it for him till they met again.

"That was the substance of the letter.

"I thought over it carefully when Midwinter had left me alone again,
after reading it. My idea was then (and is still) that Manuel had not
persuaded Armadale to cruise in a sea like the Adriatic, so much less
frequented by ships than the Mediterranean, for nothing. The terms, too,
in which the trifling loss of the cigar-case was mentioned struck me as
being equally suggestive of what was coming. I concluded that Armadale's
circular notes had not been transformed into those 'few hundreds in
gold' through any forethought or business knowledge of his own. Manuel's
influence, I suspected, had been exerted in this matter also, and once
more not without reason. At intervals through the wakeful night these
considerations came back again and again to me; and time after time they
pointed obstinately (so far as my next movement