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.
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