considerably taken aback at beholding a stranger enter the hall.
He failed to recognise him at first, but suddenly beheld him in the full light of the parlour, whither the stranger had strode with the remark:
"I wish to see you, Mr. Schuyler Cluett."
"Ho, Lomax, my dear fellow, I did not know you; but you look ill and something has surely happened, for you are as haggard as though after a long illness," and Schuyler Cluett held out his hand.
"No, Cluett, I do not take the hand of a villain," was the stern reply of the young farmer.
"By Heaven! are you drunk? What do you mean?" and the eyes of the young aristocrat flashed, while his friend Rayford, half-dressed, peered out of his door, startled at the turn affairs had taken.
"I mean, Schuyler Cluett, that you, like a snake that you are, fascinated poor little Ruby Raymond, she that was to have been my wife.
"We were happy until you came, and she was all my own; but one unlucky day I dragged you away from death, and I took you to her home, and from that moment you began to win her from me.
"I saw it all, I felt it all, for she became unhappy, and she told me she thought we should be as sister and brother, for she loved me, but not as a wife should.
"She saw how it hurt me to hear her say so, and so she said she did not mean it; but she deceived me, for she did mean it, and one week ago, on the very eve of our wedding-day, you came like a thief in the night and stole her from me."
"Good Heaven! Lomax, I am not guilty of this, and you wrong me, indeed you do!" cried Schuyler Cluett, his face the picture of amazement.
Kent Lomax seemed astounded, and asked, sternly:
"Do you deny it?"
"I do. Upon my honour, yes!"
"You deny that you ran off with Ruby Raymond from her father's house, at twelve o'clock on the night of Christmas Eve?"
"I do."
"You lie in your false throat, man!" shouted the farmer, and at his words Schuyler Cluett sprang toward him; but quick as a flash, a pistol met him, the muzzle in his face, while the young farmer said sternly:
"Back! I did not come here unprepared, and I would kill you, oh! how gladly!"
"I tell you I am falsely accused; and being unarmed, and knowing your great strength, I am forced to hear you accuse me and submit to your insults, Kent Lomax."
"Schuyler Cluett, I know that you are guilty, for I tracked you in your villainy."
"Yet you find me here in my bachelor rooms, and there is a friend who is with me, and can vouch for my words."
"I can, indeed, sir, for I know that my friend Cluett has been but two days absent from the city the week past," and Randal Rayford stepped out of his room into the parlour, he having hastily dressed as he saw that a tragedy was threatening.
"Ah! he was two days absent, then?
"They are the two days in which he committed the crime of kidnapping and murder – "
"Murder? Great Heaven! of what else will you accuse me, Lomax?"
"Yes, of murder; for when poor Mrs. Raymond read the note left by Ruby, she fell in a faint, and she never came to herself again, but died, and four days ago I went to see her buried over in the village graveyard.
"Then I took your track, Schuyler Cluett, and I found out where you hired your team of fast horses, and where you drove to catch the train.
"There you bought two tickets for Baltimore, and I lost trace of you after I arrived in that city."
"You have tracked some other man, Lomax, for your sweetheart did not run off with me."
"And I say that I saw the man of whom you hired your horses, and he described you."
"Other men look like me, Lomax."
"And I saw the station-agent where you took the train for Baltimore, and he described you, and Ruby, also."
"An accidental resemblance."
"A man met you at that station, to drive the horses back to the town where you hired them."
"That proves nothing."
"Does this?" and Kent Lomax drew from his pocket a handkerchief.
"That is a lady's handkerchief, I believe," was the cool reply.
"It was left by Ruby Raymond in the waiting-room of the railroad station, and it bears her name."
"That proves that she did run off with someone; but who, Lomax, for I am not the guilty one?"
"Does this prove anything?" and the young farmer held up the gold head of a walking-stick.
Schuyler Cluett again started forward, as though to grasp it; but the pistol's muzzle once more confronted him, while Kent Lomax fairly hissed forth the words:
"This I found in the buggy, and there is the stick – see, it fits!" and stepping to a corner, he picked up a headless walking-stick of snake-root.
"You will not deny your guilt now, for this gold head bears your name, and it came off in the buggy, and you doubtless thought you had dropped it along the road."
"I say that I am not guilty," was the sullen reply.
"Well, sir, I say that you are, and I came here to kill you; but I will not be a coward and shoot down an unarmed man. Yet I will not allow you to escape, for I intend to right the wrong I believe you have done poor Ruby, and I have vowed, over the dead body of Mrs. Raymond, to avenge her death."
"What is your intention, Lomax, for this scene is growing monotonous to me?"
"My intention is to demand that you meet me face to face, arms in our hands, and as one gentleman should meet another, though I do not consider you worthy the name you have dishonoured."
"By the Lord Harry! but this is too much, and I will meet you were you the lowest of the low; so name your friend, and Mr. Rayford here will arrange with him!" hotly said Schuyler Cluett.
"I have no friend, but that gentleman will do, and he is all we need.
"I will meet you at sunrise, at any place you may state, for I do not know this city, and our weapons will be revolvers, the distance ten paces, that gentleman to give the word to fire, and to keep it up until one or both are killed."
"That will suit me," was the cool reply, and turning to his friend, he continued:
"You will act for us, Rayford, in this affair this mad fool has forced upon me?"
"Certainly, and there is a pretty spot, on the banks of the Schuylkill river we can select, for I know it well, and I will give this gentleman written instructions how to reach there.
"At sunrise you say?" and he turned to Kent Lomax.
"Yes, and sooner if it could be so."
"That is soon enough, and here is your directions to
