To the pleasant ripple of waves, the sound of music and light voices, the yellow midsummer moon again rose over Greyport. It looked upon formless masses of rock and shrubbery, wide spaces of lawn and beach, and a shimmering expanse of water. It singled out particular objects,--a white sail in shore, a crystal globe upon the lawn, and flashed upon something held between the teeth of a crouching figure scaling the low wall of Cliffwood Lodge. Then, as a man and woman passed out from under the shadows of the foliage into the open moonlight of the garden path, the figure leaped from the wall, and stood erect and waiting in the shadow.
It was the figure of an old man, with rolling eyes, his trembling hand grasping a long, keen knife,--a figure more pitiable than pitiless, more pathetic than terrible. But the next moment the knife was stricken from his hand, and he struggled in the firm grasp of another figure that apparently sprang from the wall beside him.
“D--n you, Masterman!” cried the old man, hoarsely; “give me fair play, and I'll kill you yet!”
“Which my name is Yuba Bill,” said Bill, quietly, “and it's time this d--n fooling was stopped.”
The old man glared in Bill's face savagely. “I know you. You're one of Masterman's friends,--d--n you,--let me go till I cut his heart out,--let me go! Where is my Mary?--where is my wife?--there she is! there!--there!--there! Mary!” He would have screamed, but Bill placed his powerful hand upon his mouth, as he turned in the direction of the old man's glance. Distinct in the moonlight the figures of Islington and Blanche, arm in arm, stood out upon the garden path.
“Give me my wife!” muttered the old man hoarsely, between Bill's fingers. “Where is she?”
A sudden fury passed over Yuba Bill's face. “Where is your wife?” he echoed, pressing the old man back against the garden wall, and holding him there as in a vice. “Where is your wife?” he repeated, thrusting his grim sardonic jaw and savage eyes into the old man's frightened face. “Where is Jack Adam's wife? Where is MY wife? Where is the she-devil that drove one man mad, that sent another to hell by his own hand, that eternally broke and ruined me? Where! Where! Do you ask where? In jail in Sacramento,--in jail, do you hear?--in jail for murder, Johnson,--murder!”