The steep ascent was too much for Ericson. He stood still upon the bridge and leaned over the wall of it. Robert stood beside, almost in despair about getting him home.
'Have patience with me, Robert,' said Ericson, in his natural voice. 'I shall be better presently. I don't know what's come to me. If I had been a Celt now, I should have said I had a touch of the second sight. But I am, as far as I know, pure Northman.'
'What did you see?' asked Robert, with a strange feeling that miles of the spirit world, if one may be allowed such a contradiction in words, lay between him and his friend.
Ericson returned no answer. Robert feared he was going to have a relapse; but in a moment more he lifted himself up and bent again to the brae.
They got on pretty well till they were about the middle of the Gallowgate.
'I can't,' said Ericson feebly, and half leaned, half fell against the wall of a house.
'Come into this shop,' said Robert. 'I ken the man. He'll lat ye sit doon.'
He managed to get him in. He was as pale as death. The bookseller got a chair, and he sank into it. Robert was almost at his wit's end. There was no such thing as a cab in Aberdeen for years and years after the date of my story. He was holding a glass of water to Ericson's lips,—when he heard his name, in a low earnest whisper, from the door. There, round the door-cheek, peered the white face and red head of Shargar.
'Robert! Robert!' said Shargar.
'I hear ye,' returned Robert coolly: he was too anxious to be surprised at anything. 'Haud yer tongue. I'll come to ye in a minute.'