George starts back in terror, and Bess almost falls. Who is this man they have saved from death to cry their secret aloud like this?
‘Nay, don’t be afeard,’ growls the man. ‘You’ve saved my life, and you’ve done the best night’s work you ever done in your lives. Let’s get out of this place, and I’ll tell you something as’ll make you thank God all your days for what you’ve done.’ Hardly knowing what they do, so dazed are they by the rapid progress of events, George and Bess follow the strange man. He is wet to his waist, and his saturated clothes are frozen on him, but he doesn’t seem to care about it. His mind is busy with some thought that makes his burly frame heave with passion, and his fierce face hideous with rage.
‘By G—d, if he only knew!’ he cries.
At the park gates he gets into a cab, and bids his preservers follow him. He tells them enough to assure them he means them no harm.
In a quarter of an hour George and Bess are safely sheltered in a house in Lisson Grove, and the man they have rescued sits with them by a roaring fire, and tells them a story which makes Bess’s pale cheeks crimson with excitement and her eyes bright with joy, and which makes George raise his eyes to heaven in thankfulness, and cry:
‘At last. Thank God!—thank God!’
The man they have rescued is Josh Heckett, and the man whose retreating footsteps they had heard in the mist, and who in a fit of furious rage had hurled the old man on to the treacherous ice, was Edward Marston.
The next morning there was a council of war. George confided his story fully to Heckett, for he had learnt enough to know that Heckett cherished a scheme of deadly revenge, and that George was to be the chief instrument in it.
Heckett had only one idea now—to hunt down Marston. He was relentless in his hate, and he had found an instrument ready to his hand.