late to attempt any guard.
Pierced through the body, Wilson staggered back, clapping his hands
against his chest. Over his face there swept a swift series of changes.
Anger faded to chagrin, that to surprise, surprise to fright, and that
to gentleness.
"Sir," said he, "you've hit me fair, and very hard. I pray you, some
friend, give me an arm."
And so they led him to his carriage, and took him home a corpse. Once
more the code of the time had found its victim.
Law turned away from the coach of his smitten opponent, turned away with
a face stern and full of trouble. Many things revolved themselves in his
mind as he stepped slowly towards the carriage, in which his brother
still sat wringing his hands in an agony of perturbation.
"Jack, Jack!" cried Will Law, "Oh, heavens! You have killed him! You
have killed a man! What shall we do?"
Law Raised his head and looked his brother in the face, but seemed
scarce to hear him. Half mechanically he was fumbling in the side pocket
of his coat. He drew forth from it now a peculiar object, at which he
gazed intently and half in curiosity, It was the little beaded shoe of
the Indian woman, the very object over which this ill-fated quarrel had
arisen, and which now seemed so curiously to intermingle itself with his
affairs.
"'Twas a slight shield enough," he said slowly to himself, "yet it
served. But for this little piece of hide, methinks there might be two
of us going home to-day to take somewhat of rest."
CHAPTER XII
FOR FELONY
Late in the afternoon of the day following the encounter in Bloomsbury
Square, a little group of excited loiterers filled the entrance and
passage way at 59 Bradwell Street, the former lodgings of the two young
gentlemen from Scotland. The motley assemblage seemed for the most part
to make merry at the expense of a certain messenger boy, who bore a long
wicker box, which presently he shifted from his shoulder to a more
convenient resting place on the curb.
"Do 'ee but look at un," said one ancient dame. "He! he! Hath a parcel
of fine clothes for the tall gentleman was up in third floor! He! he!
Clothes for Mr. Law, indeed!"
"Fine clothes, eh?" cried another, a portly dame of certain years. "Much
fine clothes he'll need where he'm gone."
"Yes, indeed, that he will na. Bad luck 'twas to Mary Cullen as took un
into her house. Now she's no lodging money for her rooms, and her
lodgers be both in Newgate; least ways, one of un
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