"Hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst. How can they come, if Sir Geoffrey is back? They will know the letter was a lie, a concoction." "What to do? What to do now?" almost whined Bufton, his hand to chin. "There is but one thing to do! They might have got away before he moored--have been on their road. The frigate could not be seen till she was close to her anchorage. We must go to the spot where they were to be attacked, and wait their coming." "Ah!" exclaimed Bufton, and, try as he might, could not prevent a look of exultation from appearing on his face. "Yes, we must do that." While Granger, seeing that look--what was there he would not have seen on the features of the man he had watched like a lynx for so long?--said-- "Yet, 'tis a pity, too. Not to have one victim--not one!" "Ay, not one," Bufton repeated aloud, though to himself he said, "All the same, there will be one. And one that must be made sure of!" CHAPTER XIX. THE SECOND MAN. The evening had come; it was seven o'clock. Towards where London lay, something--a murky, grimy-looking ball, had sunk away half an hour ago, its disappearance being followed after a very short interval by darkness and an increase of the fog, so that those who were out in the night could not see thirty paces ahead of them. Nor of artificial light was there any hereabouts in these gloomy, miserable marshes, except a glimmer that shone from one window of the "Red Rover." Yet, nevertheless, another light was dawning that, later, served to brighten somewhat the dense mist and to make it possible by degrees to see objects fifty yards away, but no further. The light of a moon approaching her second quarter and consequently rising at this time. Nearer to London than where the inn was--nearer by some three or four hundred paces--and upon the bank close by, where there was a rough causeway running out into the river and down to the point which the lowest tide touched, two men paced slowly--Algernon Bufton and Lewis Granger. Each was now wrapped in a long cloak, that which the latter wore being almost the counterpart of the one that Anne had laid her hand upon that morning in his house--nay, in the mist and grime through which the sickly light of the moon shone fully, it was the counterpart, Bufton's being very similar to it. Each, too, held in his hand, though he had not yet assumed it, a vizard mask. "You hear that sound?" Granger said to his companion, as now upon his accustomed ear, if not upon the other's, there came a deep grunting noise, a noise as regular as the ticking of a clock. "You hear it and know what it is?" "I hear nothing yet. Ah! yes; now I catch it. What is the noise?" "The thumping of oars in rowlocks. It is the quarter-boat of the schooner coming ashore for its victims. And, alas! I fear now that it will get none."