A greenish gardener from near Boston, emigrating to Iowa, who thought he had seen Mr. Saunders somewhere before, was a little frightened at that gentleman’s brutal reply to an innocent question, and observing him nervously fingering at something like a cocked pistol in his breast pocket, shrank back. “A border ruffian,--perhaps Atchison or Titus,” he said to himself, and thanked his stars for his fortunate escape. The two belated passengers had tumbled in astern and now came forward, with carpet-bag in hand, to ascend the staircase to the saloon. As they passed the gangway, still open, the man with the cocked pistol turned, and they met face to face. They dropped their luggage and stepped toward him. But he was too quick for them. The nervous, trembling fingers clutched at the cocked pistol; there was a report; he staggered back with his hand at his breast and fell through the open gangway. The great wheel smote upon the muddy current and tossed up carelessly in the turbid foam behind a dead man, with forehead mangled by a paddle-stroke--a dead man, going on a voyage of unknown length along the busy river. Among the people who rushed aft at the cry of horror that arose was the woman registered as the lady of Mr. Saunders. She saw the body come whirling slowly by and lazily drown away. She sank upon a seat, and was there still in stony, speechless dread, when she felt a hand laid not unkindly on her shoulder. “Betty, we meant to kill him,” said Mr. Budlong; “perhaps it would have been murder. We were spared the final crime. I’m sorry for you, Betty, and forgive you from my heart,” and the poor old gentleman, worn out, heartbroken, his life no longer sustained by the tense vigour of a single purpose--poor old Bud drooped and fell blasted, a paralytic, at the feet of his unfaithful wife. CHAPTER XXIV MR. WADDY ACCOMPLISHES HIS RETURN Opposite Mr. Belden’s house, which, about the time of his departure from Newport, passed into the hands of his creditors, was the old country place of the Janeway family. It was still in the possession of the representative of that family, under a different name.