About this story
You are Allan Armadale, a candid young boat-builder, when a fevered stranger is carried into a Somersetshire inn with nothing to identify him but two well-worn books and the initials O. M. You visit him every morning while he recovers, and Ozias Midwinter turns out to know rigging better than any hand you have hired, becoming the friend you want beside you on your new yacht. Your mother's fear of his hidden past forces him to leave rather than explain himself, and you ride out after him into the rain.
How it opens
November rain blurred the inn windows, and mud from the farm track dried in ridges across the floor.
Two men held a fevered stranger in a chair while his bare foot clenched the rail beneath him.
Village SurgeonMove him farther than the back room tonight, and the journey may finish him.
Decimus BrockThe inn cannot be made a hospital merely because charity has found no better door.
Choose
Then I will pay for the room until he can safely leave it.
First let the surgeon quiet him; accounts can survive the night.