“Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut!” ejaculated the Doctor, rising now from his chair and beginning to walk to and fro excitedly. “Strange—most strange, and I feel sceptical in the extreme. It must all be imagination. An empty dream, brought about by the worry and anxiety of this unfortunate loss. Well, I am glad you have come, my boy, and—er—er—I must be frank with you. Your manner and the strangeness of your words half made me think that you had come, urged by your conscience, to make a confession of a very different kind.”
Glyn started; his lips parted, and he looked wildly in the Doctor’s eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that, my lad. Your manner suggested it, and I cannot tell you how relieved I feel.”
As the Doctor spoke he leaned over his writing-table and caught the boy’s hand in his, to press it warmly.
“But,” he said, as he subsided once more into his chair, “this must be a hallucination, an offspring of an overworked brain; and yet there are strange things in connection with the mental organisation, and I feel as if I ought to take some steps. What a relief it would be, my boy, to us all, the clearing away of a load of ungenerous suspicion. But one word: whom have you told of this?”
“No one, sir,” said Glyn.
“Not even Mr Singh?”
“No, sir. I have been ever since yesterday thinking about what I ought to do, and I came to the conclusion at last that I ought to come to you, sir.”
“Quite right, my boy; quite right.”
“But it was very hard work, sir—very hard indeed.”