And with the word he was about to cast the paper which he held into the ashes, when the hand of a man, who had entered the room and walked up to him with no very silent or stealthy step, while he was engrossed too deeply by his own guilty thoughts to mark very certainly any thing that might occur without, was laid with a grip like that of an iron vice upon his shoulder.
He started and turned round; but as he did so, the other hand of the stranger seized his right hand which held the marriage record, grasping it right across the knuckles, and crushed it together by an action so powerful and irresistible, that the fingers involuntarily opened, and the fatal document fell to the ground.
Instantly the man cast Jasper off with a violent jerk which sent him to a distance of three or four yards, stooped, gathered up the paper, thrust it into his bosom, and then folding his arms across his stalwort breast, stood quietly confronting the murderer, but with the quietude of the expectant gladiator.
Jasper stared at the swarthy, sun-burned face, the coal-black hair clipped short upon the brow, the flashing eyes, that pierced him like a sword. He knew the face—he almost shuddered at the knowledge—yet, for his life, he could not call to mind where or when he met him.
But he stared only for an instant; insulted—outraged—he, in his own house! His ready sword was in his hand forthwith—the stranger was armed likewise with a long broadsword and a two-edged dagger, and heavy pistols at his girdle; yet he moved not, nor made the slightest movement to put himself on the defensive.
“Draw, dog!” cried Jasper, furiously. “Draw and defend yourself, or I will slay you where you stand.”
“Hold!” replied the other steadily. “There is time enough—I will not baulk you. Look at me!—do you not know me?”
“Know you?—not I; by heaven! some rascal smuggler, I trow—come to rob while the house is in confusion! but you have reckoned without your host this time. You leave not this room alive.”
“That as it may be,” said the other, coolly. “I have looked death in the face too often to dread much the meeting; but ere I die, I have some work to do. So you do not know me?”
“Not a whit I, I tell you.”