. I had only to add, 'If you will do what I ask you to do,
no matter how incomprehensible and how mysterious my request may seem
to be; and if you will accept my assurances that you shall run no risk
yourself, and that you shall receive the proper explanations at the
proper time, you will have such a claim on my gratitude and my regard as
no man living has ever had yet!' I had only to say those words, and to
point them by a look and a stolen pressure of his hand, and I had him at
my feet, blindly eager to obey me. If he could have seen what I thought
of myself; but that doesn't matter: he saw nothing.

"Hours have passed since I sent him away (pledged to secrecy, possessed
of his instructions, and provided with his time-table) to the hotel
near the terminus, at which he is to stay till Armadale appears on the
railway platform. The excitement of the earlier part of the evening has
all worn off; and the dull, numbed sensation has got me again. Are my
energies wearing out, I wonder, just at the time when I most want them?
Or is some foreshadowing of disaster creeping over me which I don't yet
understand?

"I might be in a humor to sit here for some time longer, thinking
thoughts like these, and letting them find their way into words at their
own will and pleasure, if my Diary would only let me. But my idle pen
has been busy enough to make its way to the end of the volume. I have
reached the last morsel of space left on the last page; and whether I
like it or not, I must close the book this time for good and all, when I
close it to-night.

"Good-by, my old friend and companion of many a miserable day! Having
nothing else to be fond of, I half suspect myself of having been
unreasonably fond of _you_.

"What a fool I am!"

THE END OF THE FOURTH BOOK.

BOOK THE LAST.

I. AT THE TERMINUS.

On the night of the 2d of December, Mr. Bashwood took up his post of
observation at the terminus of the South-eastern Railway for the first
time. It was an earlier date, by six days, than the date which Allan
had himself fixed for his return. But the doctor, taking counsel of his
medical experience, had considered it just probable that "Mr. Armadale
might be perverse enough, at his enviable age, to recover sooner than
his medical advisers might have anticipated." For caution's sake,
therefore, Mr. Bashwood was instructed to begin watching the arrival of
the tidal trains on the day after he had received his employer's l