"These are terrible revelations!" Frau von Osternau said, when her husband had finished reading the letter. "Who would have thought it? But yes, I always suspected that something was wrong. I never trusted Herr Pigglewitch. While he sat at the piano and played or sang I forgot, it is true, all my doubts, but they returned as I looked into his restless, dark eyes. You know, Fritz, how often I have warned you against him and begged you to dismiss him. Now he is proved to be an adventurer and an impostor. In his own letter he confesses that he has deceived us, that his life was a lie. He knew that discovery was imminent, and so he has not returned. Now you will change your opinion of him, and no longer delay sending an account of the robbery to the Breslau police inspector."
"No, Emma, I am as thoroughly convinced of his innocence now as I always have been," her husband replied. "Whoever the thief may have been, it was not the Candidate. I wish for no clearing up of that mystery."
Lieschen arose, went to her father, and, putting her arm around his neck, kissed him tenderly, and said, "Thank you, my own kind, darling papa!" Then she ran out of the room to hide the tears which Bertha must not see.
CHAPTER XVIII.
[A FORCED RESOLVE].
On the morning of his departure from Castle Osternau Egon had packed up enough clothing to last him for a few days, and carried it himself to Station Mirbach, whence he took the next train to Breslau.
He did not know himself what course he should take. He trusted, as he had formerly been wont to do, to the impulse of the moment. Only one thing was clear to him, he needed rest and solitude, and a forcible severing of the ties which bound him to Castle Osternau, before he could come to any clear decision as to his conduct.
Arrived in Breslau, he first attended to Herr von Osternau's commission, and dispatched the money to him. At the same time he enclosed to Herr Pastor Widman, in Wennersdorf, the sum owing him. "No need of a letter of explanation," he said to himself, as he sealed the envelope. "I am a fool to send this money, but I promised Herr von Osternau, and I wish the Herr Pastor joy of his good luck."
As he sauntered through the streets of Breslau after posting his letters, whiling away the time before the departure of the noonday train, which was to carry him to the mountains, he tried in vain to collect his thoughts, to arrange his ideas. It was in vain, his mind was a chaos; he seemed walking in a confused dream; old impressions recalled by the busy life of the streets, from which he had so long been absent, struggled with those of the last few weeks, and he attained some degree of calm only when, after a couple of hours in the railway-carriage, he arrived at the little mountain village whence he was to set out upon his pedestrian excursion. He strapped upon his back the knapsack which he had purchased at Breslau to contain his few effects, and set out; it was not long before the physical effort necessary for mountain-climbing had its usual beneficial effect.
His rebellious thoughts would still revert to Castle Osternau, and refuse to be held captive by the changing landscape on either hand, but they were no longer so confused and unsteady as they had been early in the day, and when, after a long walk, he retired for the night, tolerably late in the evening, at a little mountain inn, he soon fell into a dreamless sleep.