Richard Leith sprang to his feet and confronted the intruder. His dark eyes blazed with wrath as he answered: "I am Richard Leith, the husband of Golden Glenalvan, whom you falsely reported dead to gain some wicked end of your own. Liar, I have found you out in your sin! I demand my wronged wife at your hands." John Glenalvan glared lividly at the daring man who thus boldly confronted him with his sin. The blood retreated from his face and lips, and his eyes were wild and startled. "Answer me," cried Richard Leith, advancing upon him. "Where is Golden, my wife?" "You lie! She was never your wife," John Glenalvan retorted, furiously. "Shame upon you, John, to malign the fair name of your sister," cried his father, indignantly. "Rather rejoice that she is proved innocent at last." "Let him prove her so, if he can," cried the wretch, maliciously. "I can do so. Here is the certificate of my marriage to Golden Glenalvan in New York sixteen years ago, replied Richard Leith, unfolding a yellowed paper and holding it open before the eyes of the father and son. "Then she was really your wife," John said, with unwilling belief. "Of course she was my wife. How dared you think evil of your own sister?" demanded the lawyer, scornfully. "I do not answer to you for my thoughts, sir," replied John Glenalvan, angrily. "But you must answer to me for the deed which has deprived me of my wife and child for fifteen years," cried Richard Leith. "John Glenalvan, where is my wife?" "How should I know?" he retorted. "It is too late to fence with me," answered Richard Leith. "You, and you alone, are at the bottom of my wife's mysterious disappearance. You have either shut her up in solitary confinement, or you have murdered her!" "Murdered her! How dare you hint at such a thing?" John Glenalvan thundered, growing white with fear. "I dare do more," cried the lawyer, driven to desperation. "If you do not tell me what has become of my wife I will have you arrested for her murder." At these warning words John Glenalvan threw himself upon his accuser with the cry of an infuriated wild beast. Richard Leith was weak and ill. He had risen from a sick-bed, on which wasting anxiety and grief had thrown him, when he came to Glenalvan Hall. He went down like an infant before the strong fury of his opponent, and the old man's wailing cry pierced the air. "John, hold your hand! For God's sake, do not murder the man!" CHAPTER XL. John Glenalvan did not heed his father's frightened remonstrance. He continued to rain furious blows on his feeble but struggling foe. The fell instinct of murder was aroused within his soul, and Richard Leith would have fallen a sure victim to its fury, but that suddenly the slight form of a woman rushed into the room, and, with a wild and piercing shriek, sprang upon John Glenalvan's neck, clutching it with frantic fingers in the endeavor to tear him from his almost dying victim.