It was the figure of an old man, with rolling eyes, his trembling hand grasping a long, keen knife,--a figure more pitiable than pitiless, more pathetic than terrible. But the next moment the knife was stricken from his hand, and he struggled in the firm grasp of another figure that apparently sprang from the wall beside him. “D--n you, Masterman!” cried the old man, hoarsely; “give me fair play, and I'll kill you yet!” “Which my name is Yuba Bill,” said Bill, quietly, “and it's time this d--n fooling was stopped.” The old man glared in Bill's face savagely. “I know you. You're one of Masterman's friends,--d--n you,--let me go till I cut his heart out,--let me go! Where is my Mary?--where is my wife?--there she is! there!--there!--there! Mary!” He would have screamed, but Bill placed his powerful hand upon his mouth, as he turned in the direction of the old man's glance. Distinct in the moonlight the figures of Islington and Blanche, arm in arm, stood out upon the garden path. “Give me my wife!” muttered the old man hoarsely, between Bill's fingers. “Where is she?” A sudden fury passed over Yuba Bill's face. “Where is your wife?” he echoed, pressing the old man back against the garden wall, and holding him there as in a vice. “Where is your wife?” he repeated, thrusting his grim sardonic jaw and savage eyes into the old man's frightened face. “Where is Jack Adam's wife? Where is MY wife? Where is the she-devil that drove one man mad, that sent another to hell by his own hand, that eternally broke and ruined me? Where! Where! Do you ask where? In jail in Sacramento,--in jail, do you hear?--in jail for murder, Johnson,--murder!” The old man gasped, stiffened, and then, relaxing, suddenly slipped, a mere inanimate mass, at Yuba Bill's feet. With a sudden revulsion of feeling, Yuba Bill dropped at his side, and, lifting him tenderly in his arms, whispered, “Look up, old man, Johnson! look up, for God's sake!--it's me,--Yuba Bill! and yonder is your daughter, and--Tommy!--don't you know--Tommy, little Tommy Islington?” Johnson's eyes slowly opened. He whispered, “Tommy! yes, Tommy! Sit by me, Tommy. But don't sit so near the bank. Don't you see how the river is rising and beckoning to me,--hissing, and boilin' over the rocks? It's gittin higher!--hold me, Tommy,--hold me, and don't let me go yet. We'll live to cut his heart out, Tommy,--we'll live--we'll--” His head sank, and the rushing river, invisible to all eyes save his, leaped toward him out of the darkness, and bore him away, no longer to the darkness, but through it to the distant, peaceful shining sea. HOW SANTA CLAUS CAME TO SIMPSON'S BAR.