had been possible, and none had
taken place. Free from all mental disquietude on this score, Allan
had stoutly preserved his perverse interest in his new friend. He had
written to tell Midwinter of his affliction, and he now proposed (unless
the rector formally objected to it) paying a visit to his friend before
he started for Paris the next morning.

What was Mr. Brock to do? There was no denying that Midwinter's conduct
had pleaded unanswerably against poor Mrs. Armadale's unfounded distrust
of him. If the rector, with no convincing reason to allege against it,
and with no right to interfere but the right which Allan's courtesy gave
him, declined to sanction the proposed visit, then farewell to all
the old sociability and confidence between tutor and pupil on the
contemplated tour. Environed by difficulties, which might have been
possibly worsted by a less just and a less kind-hearted man, Mr. Brock
said a cautious word or two at parting, and (with more confidence
in Midwinter's discretion and self-denial than he quite liked to
acknowledge, even to himself) left Allan free to take his own way.

After whiling away an hour, during the interval of his pupil's absence,
by a walk in the streets, the rector returned to his hotel, and, finding
the newspaper disengaged in the coffee-room, sat down absently to look
over it. His eye, resting idly on the title-page, was startled into
instant attention by the very first advertisement that it chanced
to light on at the head of the column. There was Allan's mysterious
namesake again, figuring in capital letters, and associated this time
(in the character of a dead man) with the offer of a pecuniary reward.
Thus it ran:

SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD.--To parish clerks, sextons, and others. Twenty
Pounds reward will be paid to any person who can produce evidence of
the death of ALLAN ARMADALE, only son of the late Allan Armadale, of
Barbadoes, and born in Trinidad in the year 1830. Further particulars on
application to Messrs. Hammick and Ridge, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London.

Even Mr. Brock's essentially unimaginative mind began to stagger
superstitiously in the dark as he laid the newspaper down again. Little
by little a vague suspicion took possession of him that the whole series
of events which had followed the first appearance of Allan's namesake
in the newspaper six years since was held together by some mysterious
connection, and was tending steadily to some unimaginable end. Wit