What could a solitary woman want at the brink of the Yellow Snake River at twelve o'clock midnight?
Her errand could scarcely be a benign one; and the conjecture that suicide might possibly be its object, instantly, of course, arose in my mind.
My duty under the circumstances, anyhow, seemed plain—to keep an eye upon her, and hold myself in readiness to interfere, if needful.
After a moment's deliberation, I, too, descended the stone stairs.
CHAPTER II.—AT THE RIVER SIDE.
Yet to keep an eye upon her was more easily said than done. At the bottom of the terrace it was impenetrably dark. Not a star shone from the clouded sky. The points of light along the opposite shore—and here and there, upon the bosom of the stream, the red or green lantern of a vessel—punctured the darkness without relieving it. Strain my eyesight as I might, I could see nothing beyond the length of my arm.
But the lapping of the waves upon the strand, and about the piles of the little T-shaped landing-stage that extends into the river at this point, was distinctly audible, and served to guide me. Towards the landing-stage I cautiously advanced; and when I felt the planking of it beneath my feet, I halted. The whereabouts of the woman I had no means of determining. “However,” thought I, “if her business be self-destruction, she has not yet transacted it, for I have heard no splash.”
Ah! Suddenly a flare of heat-lightning on the eastern horizon illuminated the land and the water. It was very brief, but it lasted long enough for me to take my bearings, and to discern the object of my quest.