CHAPTER XXIV.
DEATH.
I need not recount the proceedings of the Belgian police; how they
interrogated Robert concerning a letter from Mary St. John which
they found in an inner pocket; how they looked doubtful over a copy
of Horace that lay in his coat, and put evidently a momentous
question about some algebraical calculations on the fly-leaf of it.
Fortunately or unfortunately--I do not know which--Robert did not
understand a word they said to him. He was locked up, and left to
fret for nearly a week; though what he could have done had he been
at liberty, he knew as little as I know. At last, long after it was
useless to make any inquiry about Miss Lindsay, he was set at
liberty. He could just pay for a steerage passage to London, whence
he wrote to Dr. Anderson for a supply, and was in Aberdeen a few
days after.
This was Robert's first cosmopolitan experience. He confided the
whole affair to the doctor, who approved of all, saying it could
have been of no use, but he had done right. He advised him to go
home at once, for he had had letters inquiring after him. Ericson
was growing steadily worse--in fact, he feared Robert might not see
him alive.
If this news struck Robert to the heart, his pain was yet not
without some poor alleviation:--he need not tell Ericson about
Mysie, but might leave him to find out the truth when, free of a
dying body, he would be better able to bear it. That very night he
set off on foot for Rothieden.
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