his body in a superhuman effort to guard and protect himself. The
other, though so much older and smaller, seemed to be composed
entirely of fibres of steel, and, in his murderous endeavors, put
forth a strength so extraordinary that for a moment our hero felt
his heart melt within him with terror for his life. The spittal
appeared to dry up within his mouth, and his hair to creep and
rise upon his head. With a vehement cry of despair and anguish,
he put forth one stupendous effort for defence, and, clapping his
heel behind the other's leg, and throwing his whole weight
forward, he fairly tripped his antagonist backward as he stood.
Together they fell upon the floor, locked in the most desperate
embrace, and overturning a chair with a prodigious clatter in
their descent--our hero upon the top and the little gentleman in
black beneath him.

As they struck the floor the little man in black emitted a most
piercing and terrible scream, and instantly relaxing his efforts
of attack, fell to beating the floor with the back of his hands
and drubbing with his heels upon the rug in which he had become
entangled.

Our hero leaped to his feet, and with dilating eyes and expanding
brain and swimming sight stared down upon the other like one
turned to a stone.

He beheld instantly what had occurred, and that he had, without
so intending, killed a fellow-man. The knife, turned away from
his own person, had in their fall been plunged into the bosom of
the other, and he now lay quivering in the last throes of death.
As Jonathan gazed he beheld a thin red stream trickle out from