His face black and convulsed with rage, and his outstretched fingers working convulsively, and hungering for a rogue's throat, made the resolute Hardie quake. He whipped out of the furious man's way, and got to the safe, pale and trembling. “Hush! no violence!” he gasped: “I'll give you your money this moment you ruffian.” While he unlocked the safe with trembling hands, Dodd stood like a man petrified, his arm and fingers stretched out and threatening; and Skinner saw him pull at his necktie furiously, like one choking. Hardie got the notes and bills all in a hurry, and held them out to Dodd. In which act, to his consternation and surprise and indignation, he received a back-handed blow on the eye that dazzled him for an instant; and there was David with his arms struggling wildly and his fists clenched, his face purple, and his eyes distorted so that little was seen but the whites the next moment his teeth gnashed loudly together, and he fell headlong on the floor with a concussion so momentous that the windows rattled and the room shook violently; the dust rose in a cloud. A loud ejaculation burst from Hardie and Skinner, And then there was an awful silence. CHAPTER XIX WHEN David fell senseless on the floor, Mr. Hardie was somewhat confused by the back-handed blow from his convulsed and whirling arm. But Skinner ran to him, held up his head, and whipped off his neckcloth. Then Hardie turned to seize the bell and ring for assistance; but Skinner shook his head and said it was useless: this was no faint: old Betty could not help him. “It is a bad day's work, sir,” said he, trembling: “he is a dead man.” “Dead? Heaven forbid!” “Apoplexy!” whispered Skinner. “Run for a doctor then: lose no time: don't let us have his blood on our hands! Dead?” And he repeated the word this time in a very different tone, a tone too strange and significant to escape Skinner's quick ear. However, he laid David's head gently down and rose from his knees to obey. What did he see now, but Mr. Hardie, with his back turned, putting the notes and bills softly into the safe again out of sight. He saw, comprehended, and took his own course with equal rapidity. “Come, run!” cried Mr. Hardie; “I'll take care of him; every moment is precious.” (“Wants to get rid of me!” thought Skinner.) “No, sir,” said he, “be ruled by me: let us take him to his friends: he won't live; and we shall get all the blame if we doctor him.” Already egotism had whispered Hardie, “How lucky if he should die!” and now a still guiltier thought flashed through him: he did not try to conquer it; he only trembled at himself for entertaining it. “At least: give him air!” said he in a quavering voice, consenting to a crime, yet compromising with his conscience, feebly.