"Ah, I know," Ben replied, regaining somewhat his former composure. "Jean has been stuffing you with lies. She's a little vixen, and wants to get me into trouble."
"Look here," and Douglas' voice was stern as he spoke. "Don't you begin anything like that. I have never spoken a word to Jean Benton, and as far as I know she has never said anything about your cowardly deed to her. She is as true as steel in her love for you, and my advice is for you to act like a man, go to her, be true to her, and marry her as you promised you would that night you hurled her into the harbour."
"You are lying," Ben blustered. "If Jean didn't tell you this cock-and-bull yarn, how would you know anything about it?"
"I am not lying, Ben Stubbles. There were eyes watching your every action that night on Long Wharf; there were ears listening to what you said, and but for these hands of mine Jean Benton would be dead, and you would now be arrested for murdering her."
"You! You heard, and saw, and saved her!" Ben gasped, shrinking back from before the steady gaze of his pitiless accuser.
"I did," was the quiet reply.
"Were you alone?"
"Do you think I could have lifted her wet body from the water myself? No, I had help. But never mind that now. You go to Jean and make love to no one else."
The strain through which he had just passed was telling severely upon Ben. He mopped his face and forehead with his handkerchief. His sense of fear was passing and anger was taking its place. It annoyed him to think that he should be thus cornered and affected by Jake Jukes' hired man. Then his opponent's closing words roused the fire in his soul, and he turned angrily upon him.
"Ah, I see through your little game now," he cried. "You are jealous of me."