"As I returned from B. I met Brandow; he may easily have learned from my coachman that I had been talking to the Justizrath for an hour. He rode towards home at full gallop; an hour after the lawyer arrived with the gendarme, but did not find Hinrich Scheel, although people had seen him about all the forenoon; and he even took his master's horse when he came home. The master was very, very anxious that the missing man should be found; he even directed the search himself; he--" "I will not protract this horrible supposition farther; it is the only one which occurs in my story, all the others are facts--facts which cry aloud to heaven--which ought not, must not remain unpunished. I know, my dearest friend, you'll think as I do, though every fibre of your heart must quiver at the thought that you--you-- "I shall come to Sundin with my wife day after to-morrow. We will then discuss, not what is to be done--there can be no doubt about that; but the how is certainly to be considered." Gotthold put the letter back in his pocket, and gazed out into the cheerless, rain-blurred landscape so fixedly, that he scarcely heard a carriage, which, coming from Prora, passed by on the other side of the road. It was still a half hour's ride to Prora, but it seemed an eternity to the impatient traveller. At last the carriage stopped before Wollnow's house. CHAPTER XXVI. "I am so sorry to have you go," said Ottilie; "my husband must certainly return before evening. He will be very angry with me for not keeping you. And then, confess it frankly, my dear friend, you are going without any definite plan--any fixed purpose--and in this way intend to meet a man like Brandow--that is, to lose the game before it is begun." Ottilie had seized Gotthold's hands as if to draw him back from the door into the room. Gotthold shook his head. "You are right," said he, "but there are cases where the one who is not right, or at least cannot prove that he is, must act according to his own opinions. That is my case. I cannot put Brandow in prison or drag him to the scaffold; I can't--" "Even if he must otherwise still remain Cecilia's husband? You cannot permit that either." "Certainly not, and therefore a third plan must be found." "Which never can be. Dear, dear Gotthold, let me say to you what my husband would have said if he were here: Never! He will never yield if you go to him so, alone and helpless, without the bailiff and myrmidons of the law; you must be able to prove that you have him completely in your power, and that is not the case now. My husband said yesterday evening: 'If we could only confront him with Scheel. There is really nothing to be done without him; but where is Scheel? Perhaps at the bottom of the Dollan morass.' Ah! my dear friend, stay away from this den of murderers."