t.

"For God's sake!" gasped the little liquor-seller.

Jim and Dick stood hesitatingly, glaring at Abel. Jim struck his teeth
together. Ned joined them, and they surrounded Abel.

"What in ---- do you mean by striking me, you drunken pig?" growled Jim,
but not yet striking. Conscious of his strength, he had the instinctive
forbearance of superiority, but it was fast mastered by the maddening
liquor.

"Time to go home! Time to go home!" cried the thin piping voice of the
liquor-seller.

"What the ---- do you mean by insulting my friend?" half hiccuped Dick,
shaking his head threateningly, and stiffening his arm and fist at his
side as he edged toward Abel.

The hard black eyes of Abel Newt shot sullen fire; His rage half sobered
him. He threw his head with the old defiant air, tossing the hair back.
The old beauty flashed for an instant through the ruin that had been
wrought in his face, and, kindling into a wild, glittering look of wrath,
his eye swept them all as he struck heavily forward.

"Time to go home! Time to go home!" came the cry again, unheeded,
unheard.

There was a sudden, fierce, brutal struggle. The men's faces were human
no longer, but livid with bestial passion. The liquor-seller rushed into
the street, and shouted aloud for help. The cry rang along the dark,
still houses, and startled the drowsy, reluctant watchmen on their
rounds. They sprang their rattles.

"Murder! murder!" was the cry, which did not disturb the neighbors, who
were heavy sleepers, and accustomed to noise and fighting.

"Murder! murder!" It rang nearer and nearer as the watchmen hastened
toward the corner. They found the little man standing at his door,
bareheaded, and shouting,

"My God! my God! they've killed a man--they've killed a man!"

"Stop your noise, and let us in. What is it?"

The little man pointed back into his dim shop. The watchmen saw only the
great yellow round tanks of the liquor pure as imported, and pushed in
behind the blind. There was no one there; a bench was overturned, and
there were glasses upon the counter. No one there? One of the watchmen
struck something with his foot, and, stooping, touched a human body. He
started up.

"There's a man here."

He did not say dead, or drunk; but his tone said every thing.

One of them ran to the next doctor, and returned with him after a little
while. Meanwhile the others had raised the body. It was yet warm. They
laid it upon the bench.

"Warm sti