During several hours the unfortunate man continued much the same as before; but about midnight he rallied. There was nobody in the room except Fanny and the servant girl. Colin had taken his leave long before; and Skinwell's stripling clerk, who was introduced to the reader at the commencement of this story, and who had now grown up into a tame, spiritless, and crest-fallen man, was sitting below in the kitchen, seeking refuge from the whereases and aforesaids of the law in the pleasant pages of Joseph Andrews. Mr. Skinwell, as I have said, rallied a little. He looked wildly about as though seeking for assurance of the locality of the place he was in, and then feebly beckoned Fanny to bring her ear near him. “Who has been to me?” he whispered. “Only Dr. Rowel, sir,” answered Fanny assuringly. “Then I am a dead man!” exclaimed the lawyer, bursting into a flood of tears. “Oh Heaven, forgive my sins as I forgive all those who have sinned against me!” And he forced his head into the pillow as though he would bury it out of sight. The foam gathered upon his blue lips, and his teeth snapped together with a sound that made the girl's blood turn.--“Oh, what has he given me? my breath is hotter than fire.--The flame eats my heart out!--water,--water!” “No, no!” cried an eager voice behind; “'twill kill him!” and Dr. Rowel strode across the room. Fanny saw him, and his looks terrified her. The sedateness of the experienced physician, which no circumstance of this kind can generally disturb, was all gone. He breathed half-convulsively through his opened mouth and dilated nostrils; shining beads of water that momentarily glistened in the lamplight, stood upon his forehead; and several times successively, as he crossed the room, he passed his hand with instinctive energy over the sides of his temples, so as to cast the hair which clustered there backwards, as though his burning brain sought closer contact with the cool common air. He stood by the bedside. Skinwell rolled round his eyes, and strove to cry, “You 've poisoned me!” But the doctor rapidly closed his hand over the sick man's mouth, and drowned his failing voice. Fanny stood petrified with horror; while the servant girl rushed screaming out of the room. The doctor still kept his open hand on Skin-well's mouth, while the dying man Strove to set himself free by violent motions of the head and writhings of the body. A stifled call on the name of Fanny at length broke from his muffled lips. “Go out! leave me!” fiercely cried Rowel to the horrified young woman; but she did not obey him. “Fanny!” again escaped the lawyer's lips. The sight, the voice, the desperate sense that came upon her all at once that Rowel was killing his patient, nerved her with more than woman's courage and ten times woman's ordinary strength. She rushed franticly to the opposite side of the bed from that on which the doctor stood, and violently seized his wrist.