The Argosy — page 201: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

184 The Mystery of Allan Grale. The Doctor turned the paper over. No writing was on the other side, only a monogram; the monogram of the Carstow Gentlemen’s Cricket Club. “Dear me!” he mused, “is some young local dandy threatening those whom it may concern that he will be ‘reduced’ to take a ‘spade?’ The best thing for him, in all likelihood !” Then he shook off the fragment and thought no more about it. “There is certainly some mystery about this Mark Bedell,” he said, returning to his own musings. ‘“ It seems scarcely likely that Charles would take a real name and put it bodily into that poor little fiction of his. But I don’t blame Grale as I did before I knew this.” CHAPTER XII. BEWARE! CHARLES CARR seemed as bewildered as Dr. Palmer himself, when he heard of Mr. Wilton’s extraordinary statement about ‘ Mark Bedell.” Of one thing he declared himself positive: that he had taken the name from no real person, though he could give no better reason for his choosing it than that “‘it came into his head.” He had thought first of giving another christian name, but had finally decided on “ Mark.” He could tell no more, Shan he had no more to tell.. For the present, things had to be left at this. And then day after day went by for a week or two, and still Mr. Grale did not return, and Charles was doomed to wear out slow hours of restless leisure. | At Dering Court, too, things went on in a dismal monotony of their own. The Doctors came and went. The wife, the nephews, and the niece, were in devoted attendance on the General, save that two or three times, George Vivian, who looked pale, and seemed absent- minded, took a hurried journey to London. ‘The invalid had regained consciousness and memory, except as regarded the circumstances of his seizure. On that his mind was a perfect blank. He could recall nothing after his leaving the ‘‘ Knight’s Arms.” He had not yet had another attack ; but the medical men said one was always imminent, and that the least excitement might suffice to bring it on. Evidently George Vivian did not like that opinion, and sighed over it. Every morning a servant came from Moorland House to enquire after the General’s health, and twice since Mr. Grale’s absence Mrs. Grale and Mary Anne had ordered their carriage in the same direction, taking up some offering from their vinery. Only Allan Grale had “never put in an appearance at the Court since that afternoon of the General’s seizure, when he had brought up the Oriental box for Edgar Vivian’s keeping. George imagined, judging from his own feelings, that young Grale shrank from the sad associations of sickness and im- pending death; while Edgar thought him a strange fellow, whose CONNIE OOO KS (EO)