s with dreadful portent of instant death.

With an instinct to preserve his life, he caught his assailant by the
wrist, and, bending it away from himself, set every fibre of 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 the parted and grinning lips;
he beheld the eyes turn inward; he beheld the eyelids contract; he
beheld the figure stretch itself; he beheld it become still in death.

IV. The Momentous Adventure with the Stranger with the Silver Ear-rings

So our hero stood stunned and bedazed, gazing down upon his victim,
like a man turned into a stone. His brain appeared to him to expand
like a bubble, the blood surged and bummed in his ears with every
gigantic beat of his heart, his vision swam, and his trembling hands
were bedewed with a cold and repugnant sweat. The dead figure upon the
floor at his feet gazed at him with a wide, glassy stare, and in the
confusion of his mind it appe