Chapter Twenty Six.
Not in the Newspapers.
Twelve weeks had elapsed—cold, weary weeks of constant sledging over those bleak, snow-bound plains, westward, back to civilisation.
On the twenty-seventh of April—I have, alas! cause to remember the date—at six o’clock in the evening, I alighted from the train at Brighton, and Hartwig came eagerly forward to greet me.
I had journeyed incessantly, avoiding Petersburg and coming by Warsaw and Berlin to the Hook of Holland, and that morning had apprised him of my arrival in England; but, I fear, as I emerged from the train my appearance must have been somewhat travel-worn. True, I had bought some ready-made clothes in Berlin—a new overcoat and a new hat. But I was horribly conscious that they were ill-fitting, as is every man who wears a “ready-to-wear garment”—as the tailors call it.
Yes, I was utterly fagged out after that long and fruitless errand, and a I glanced at Hartwig I detected in an instant that something unusual had occurred.
“What’s the matter?” I asked quickly. “What has happened?”
“Ah! that I unfortunately do not exactly know, Mr Trewinnard,” was his reply in a tone quite unusual to him.
“But what has occurred?”