air and anguish, he put forth one stupendous
effort for defense, 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 Earrings_

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 hummed 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 appeared to Jonathan that he was, indeed, a
murderer.

What monstrous thing was this that had befallen him who, but a moment
before, had been so entirely innocent of the guilt of blood? What was
he now to do in such an extremity as this, with his victim lying dead
at his feet, a poniard in his heart? Who would believe him to be
guiltless of crime with such a dreadful evidence as this presented
against him? How was he, a stranger in a foreign land, to totally
defend himself against an accusation of mistaken justice? At these
thoughts a developed terror gripped at his vitals and a sweat as cold
as ice bedewed his e