Revenge! | Page 3

should be
sharp and sudden, that she might have no chance either to help herself
or to drag him with her. Of her screams in that desolate region he had
no fear. No one could reach the spot except from the hotel, and no one
that morning had left the house, even for an expedition to the
glacier--one of the easiest and most popular trips from the place.
Curiously enough, when they came within sight of the Hanging
Outlook, Mrs. Bodman stopped and shuddered. Bodman looked at her
through the narrow slits of his veiled eyes, and wondered again if she
had any suspicion. No one can tell, when two people walk closely
together, what unconscious communication one mind may have with

another.
"What is the matter?" he asked gruffly. "Are you tired?"
"John," she cried, with a gasp in her voice, calling him by his Christian
name for the first time in years, "don't you think that if you had been
kinder to me at first, things might have been different?"
"It seems to me," he answered, not looking at her, "that it is rather late
in the day for discussing that question."
"I have much to regret," she said quaveringly. "Have you nothing?"
"No," he answered.
"Very well," replied his wife, with the usual hardness returning to her
voice. "I was merely giving you a chance. Remember that."
Her husband looked at her suspiciously.
"What do you mean?" he asked, "giving me a chance? I want no chance
nor anything else from you. A man accepts nothing from one he hates.
My feeling towards you is, I imagine, no secret to you. We are tied
together, and you have done your best to make the bondage
insupportable."
"Yes," she answered, with her eyes on the ground, "we are tied
together--we are tied together!"
She repeated these words under her breath as they walked the few
remaining steps to the Outlook. Bodman sat down upon the crumbling
wall. The woman dropped her alpenstock on the rock, and walked
nervously to and fro, clasping and unclasping her hands. Her husband
caught his breath as the terrible moment drew near.
"Why do you walk about like a wild animal?" he cried. "Come here and
sit down beside me, and be still."
She faced him with a light he had never before seen in her eyes--a light

of insanity and of hatred.
"I walk like a wild animal," she said, "because I am one. You spoke a
moment ago of your hatred of me; but you are a man, and your hatred
is nothing to mine. Bad as you are, much as you wish to break the bond
which ties us together, there are still things which I know you would
not stoop to. I know there is no thought of murder in your heart, but
there is in mine. I will show you, John Bodman, how much I hate you."
The man nervously clutched the stone beside him, and gave a guilty
start as she mentioned murder.
"Yes," she continued, "I have told all my friends in England that I
believed you intended to murder me in Switzerland."
"Good God!" he cried. "How could you say such a thing?"
"I say it to show how much I hate you--how much I am prepared to
give for revenge. I have warned the people at the hotel, and when we
left two men followed us. The proprietor tried to persuade me not to
accompany you. In a few moments those two men will come in sight of
the Outlook. Tell them, if you think they will believe you, that it was an
accident."
The mad woman tore from the front of her dress shreds of lace and
scattered them around. Bodman started up to his feet, crying, "What are
you about?" But before he could move toward her she precipitated
herself over the wall, and went shrieking and whirling down the awful
abyss.
The next moment two men came hurriedly round the edge of the rock,
and found the man standing alone. Even in his bewilderment he
realised that if he told the truth he would not be believed.

WHICH WAS THE MURDERER?
Mrs. John Forder had no premonition of evil. When she heard the hall

clock strike nine she was blithely singing about the house as she
attended to her morning duties, and she little imagined that she was
entering the darkest hour of her life, and that before the clock struck
again overwhelming disaster would have fallen upon her. Her young
husband was working in the garden, as was his habit each morning
before going to his office. She expected him in every moment to make
ready for his departure down town. She heard the click of the front gate,
and a moment