rlasting lawyers," was all he said, when he had
read the letter, and had crumpled it up in his pocket. The rector's turn
came next, before the week's sojourn at Castletown had expired. On the
fifth day he found a letter from Somersetshire waiting for him at the
hotel. It had been brought there by Midwinter, and it contained news
which entirely overthrew all Mr. Brock's holiday plans. The clergyman
who had undertaken to do duty for him in his absence had been
unexpectedly summoned home again; and Mr. Brock had no choice (the day
of the week being Friday) but to cross the next morning from Douglass
to Liverpool, and get back by railway on Saturday night in time for
Sunday's service.

Having read his letter, and resigned himself to his altered
circumstances as patiently as he might, the rector passed next to a
question that pressed for serious consideration in its turn. Burdened
with his heavy responsibility toward Allan, and conscious of his own
undiminished distrust of Allan's new friend, how was he to act, in the
emergency that now beset him, toward the two young men who had been his
companions on the cruise?

Mr. Brock had first asked himself that awkward question on the Friday
afternoon, and he was still trying vainly to answer it, alone in his own
room, at one o'clock on the Saturday morning. It was then only the end
of May, and the residence of the ladies at Thorpe Ambrose (unless they
chose to shorten it of their own accord) would not expire till the
middle of June. Even if the repairs of the yacht had been completed
(which was not the case), there was no possible pretense for hurrying
Allan back to Somersetshire. But one other alternative remained--to
leave him where he was. In other words, to leave him, at the
turning-point of his life, under the sole influence of a man whom he had
first met with as a castaway at a village inn, and who was still, to all
practical purposes, a total stranger to him.

In despair of obtaining any better means of enlightenment to guide
his decision, Mr. Brock reverted to the impression which Midwinter had
produced on his own mind in the familiarity of the cruise.

Young as he was, the ex-usher had evidently lived a varied life. He
could speak of books like a man who had really enjoyed them; he could
take his turn at the helm like a sailor who knew his duty; he could
cook, and climb the rigging, and lay the cloth for dinner, with an odd
delight in the exhibition of his own dexterit