If I now comment out the region of allout.el where the debugger enters
-- namely (3504 3527), which happens to be this sexp near the start of
the code: (eval-when-compile 'cl) -- and then again type `M-x
abort-recursive-edit', no further error is raised.  As soon as I
restore the commented out sexp, the error recurs.

In GNU Emacs 22.0.50.5 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.8.3)
 of 2005-11-24 on escher
X server distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.60802000
configured using `configure '--with-x-toolkit=gtk''

Steve Berman