He was pained and puzzled what to do. Had the stranger any connection with her disappearance, he asked himself? Should he tell of that? And yet she had been to her father's house since then, so that it would be of little value to mention it, he thought.
Perhaps she had run away with the man. That was quite a likely thing to happen, and if Mysie wanted him no one else had anything to do with it. Still, she might have told her people, he thought. But perhaps she might do that later on.
But Mysie and her fate would not be banished from his mind, and he lay and tumbled and tossed, a terrible anxiety within him, for youth is apt to pity its own sufferings, and give them a heroic touch under the spell of unrequited love.
Thus the night passed and morning came, and he had not slept, and he went to his work debating as to whether he should inform the police or not about the man he had seen in the company of Mysie. But no decision was ever come to.
CHAPTER XVII
MYSIE RUNS AWAY
It was a gray, sultry summer night, with one small patch of red near the western horizon when Mysie, making the excuse of going to the village to visit her parents, had stolen over the moorland path on her way to join the evening train for Edinburgh at a neighboring village station.
She had left early, so as to have plenty of time on the way, and also because she was really ill, and could not hurry.
She had forced herself to work, so as not to attract attention to her weak state during the past few weeks. Peter, who had already gone some days before, had now everything ready for her, and this was her final break with the old life.