"'I'll hide the maid in a cypress-tree,
When the footstep of death is near.'"
The next moment he came face to face with Ben Perkins—but no Alice was in his arms now, nor was she anywhere in sight.
"Fiend! devil! what have you done with my wife?"
His eyes shone like coals out of a face as white as ashes, as he confronted his enemy with a look that would have made any sane man tremble; but the wretch before him only stared him vacantly in the face with a mournful smile, continuing to sing—
"'And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see,
Her paddle I soon shall hear.'"
"Where is she—answer me, devil?"
The hand of Philip clutched the lunatic's throat, and with the strength of an anguish as superhuman as the transient power of the other had been, he shook him fiercely as he repeated the question. The madman wilted under his grasp, but as soon as the hold was relaxed, he slid from under it, and sprang away.
"'They made her a grave too cold and damp,'"
he chanted, darting from tree to tree, as Philip, hopeless of making him tell what he had done with Alice, tried to shoot him down.