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.
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