He shuddered; he did not like to recall it any more. To-day everything seemed to have turned out well; Martha's glorified image smiled down in peace and benediction, and, like a flower sprung from her grave, happiness was blooming anew for him.
Nearer and nearer came the turrets of the little town; higher and higher they stretched up behind the alder thickets. And a quarter of an hour later the carriage drove into the roughly-paved street.
Soon after entering the gates Robert made the discovery that people who met him to-day behaved towards him in the most peculiar manner. Some avoided him, others in evident confusion doffed their caps and then as quickly as possible fled from his presence. On the other hand, the windows of every house past which the carriage drove, filled with heads that stared at him gravely and disappeared hurriedly behind the curtains at his greeting.
He shook his head doubtfully. But as his mind was so full of the approaching struggle, he took not much notice, and henceforth looked neither to the right nor to the left. At the corner of the marketplace, where there used to be the little excise-office, stood his uncle's, the doctor's, old housekeeper, holding her hands hidden under her blue apron, and with an expression on her face like that of an undertaker.
As the carriage approached, she signed to him to stop.
"Well, Mrs. Liebetreu," he said, amused, "you at least do not take to your heels at my approach to-day."
The old woman gazed up at the sky, so that she might not have to look him in the face.
"Oh! young master," said she--he was always called "young master," to distinguish him from his father, though he was long past thirty--"the doctor wishes me to ask if you will kindly just step round there first; he has something to say to you."
"Is what he has to say to me very pressing?"
The woman was very much terrified, for she thought the unhappy intelligence would now fall to her lot to tell.