y. I have sworn a
statement before the said magistrate for the Crown-lands authorities,
and purpose sending a copy to each of your directors individually.
That ought to be sufficient, and I have no more time to waste with you."

"But you have me to settle with, or I'll blast your name throughout the
province if I drag my own in the mud. Where's my wife?" snarled
Leslie, wrenching himself free from his confederate's restraining grasp.

"If you're bent on making a fool of yourself, and I guess you can't
help it, go on your own way," interposed Shackleby, with ironical
contempt.

"I have no intention of telling you where Mrs. Leslie is," asserted
Geoffrey. "You will hear from her when she considers it advisable to
write."

A whir of driver wheels slipping on the rails came down the track,
followed by a shock of couplings tightening and the snorting of a heavy
locomotive, but none of the party noticed it.

"She was here; you can't deny it," shouted Leslie, who had yielded to a
fit of rabid fury. He was not a courageous man, and had been held in
check by fear of Shackleby, but there was some spirit in him, and,
perhaps because he had injured Thurston, had always hated him. Now
when his case seemed desperate, with the boldness of a rat driven into
a corner, he determined to tear the hand that crushed him.

"I'll take action against you. I'll blazon it in the press. I'll
close every decent house in the province against you," he continued,
working himself up into a frenzy. "Where have you hidden my wife? By
Heaven, I'll make you tell me."

"Take care!" warned Geoffrey, straightening himself and thrusting one
big hand behind his back. "It is desperately hard for me to keep my
fingers off you now, but if you say another word against Mrs. Leslie,
look to yourself. Shackleby, you have heard him; now for the woman's
sake listen to me. I have never wronged your wife by thought or word,
Leslie, and the greatest indiscretion she was ever guilty of was
marrying you."

"You have hidden her!" almost screamed the desperate man. "I'll have
satisfaction one way if you're too strong for me another. Liar,
traitor, sed----"

Geoffrey strode forward before the last word was completed, Leslie
flung up one hand, but Shackleby struck it aside in time, and something
that fell from it clinked with a metallic sound. Exactly how what
followed really happened was never quite certain. Leslie, blind with
rage, either tripped ov