A sense of brooding calamity grew on him while he walked the familiar streets, but what form it could take he could not conceive. It was not that Margaret would resent his laggard arrival, and display unreasonable temper—he knew her too well to have that thought. It was a brooding fear of something infinitely worse than that. It might be that ruin had overtaken her father because Cochlaeus had discovered the part he had played in printing off the Scripture sheets. It might be—— God forbid!
He stopped, and drops of sweat like great beads rolled down his face. His darling might be dead!
He had turned down the street which led to his own home, thinking to see his mother first, and change his travel-stained clothes for something better; but this possibility sent him down a byway which would take him by short-cuts to his darling's home.
He went at first at a swift walk, but this unnameable horror grew on him so much that he broke into a run, so that when he came out of the alley almost opposite Margaret's home he was so spent and breathless that he had to stand a few minutes before he could enter the house and was able to speak.
When he entered the shop Margaret's father was standing behind the counter. The gloom on the printer's face forced a question from his lips.
"What is wrong? Where is she? Is she dead?"
He stood at the counter, his hands shaking as they rested on it, his face flushed with the heat of his run, his lips trembling, and his breath coming almost in sobs.
"I know not," was the slow and sad reply. "God knows, Herman, but we do not. And to-morrow was to be her marriage day. Come in, my son, where we can talk."
The printer led the way into the quiet parlour behind the shop, where Margaret and Herman had spent so many happy hours. There Byrckmann sank into a chair, and, resting his elbows on the table, buried his careworn face in his hands, and wept. And to see a strong man weep is like watching a strong swimmer in his agony in a sea that claims him, and is seeking to drag him down.
"My darling! My child! My child! Would God I had died for thee!" he sobbed.