The street lamps flamed and flickered, casting weird shadows on the darkened buildings of the business street where he stood. Ahead of him, as he again started forward, he saw a solitary individual stop under a light and take a letter from his pocket, which, leaning against the lamp-post, he began to read. Something in his figure and attitude arrested Major Walden’s attention. He looked at him searchingly as he approached him. At the moment the man, hearing his footsteps, turned his face from the letter toward him.
A flame of angry fire shot from the Major’s brain to each prescient nerve and muscle of his being. With a spring he was upon the man, his hand upon his throat.
“Ah, ha! You miserable, white-livered abomination! It is well I have found you now,—now, when your victim is here in this city,—you fiend-ambassador of Satan! Killing is too good for you!�
The attack was so sudden the victim had no chance to cry out, and sank to the ground, with no show of resistance, the Major’s hand in a death-grip upon his throat, shutting off breath from his lungs.
“Take that—and that—and that!� cried Walden, raining the blows with his clenched fist upon the other’s face and shoulders. “I shall kill you! do you hear?�
The victim struggled, his eyes, protruding from their sockets, pleaded for mercy, and his speechless tongue hung swollen from his lips. Voices were heard approaching him, but the infuriated and frenzied man did not heed them. The higher man had, for the time, been lost in the maddened animal.
“You snake! It is a joy to throttle you, to see your lying tongue palsied! Your forked tongue that has stung with its venom God’s best and purest. A thousand deaths could not pay for the ruin you have made, you viper!� and the Major’s eyes, red with passion and fury, glared into the terrified ones beneath him.
It is a fearful thing to see a man, made in the image of God, unchain the passions of his soul and allow them to control him. Major Walden was, for the time, a madman.
“Hold on, what’s the matter here?� cried a voice, and a hand grasped the collar of the would-be murderer.
“I should think the fellow was holding on with a vengeance,� said another voice. “Come, let up that fellow, or you’ll be an assassin.�