Mallalieu's hot temper, held very well in check until then, flamed up as Stoner spat out the last contemptuous epithet. He had stood with his right hand behind him, grasping his heavy oaken stick--now, as his rage suddenly boiled, he swung hand and stick round in a savage blow at his tormentor, and the crook of the stick fell crashing against Stoner's temples. So quick was the blow, so sudden the assault, that the clerk had time to do no more than throw up an arm. And as he threw it up, and as the heavy blow fell, the old, rotten railing against which Stoner had leant so nonchalantly, gave way, and he fell back through it, and across the brow of the quarry--and without a sound. Mallalieu heard the crash of his stick on his victim's temples; he heard the rending and crackling of the railings--but he heard neither cry, nor sigh, nor groan from Stoner. Stoner fell backward and disappeared--and then (it seemed an age in coming) Mallalieu's frightened senses were aware of a dull thud somewhere far down in the depths into which he had fallen. Then came silence--deep, heavy silence--broken at last by the cry of a curlew flying across the lonely moor. Mallalieu was seized with a trembling fit. He began to shake. His heavy frame trembled as if under the effects of a bad ague; the hand which had struck the blow shook so violently that the stick dropped from it. And Mallalieu looked down at the stick, and in a sudden overwhelming rage kicked it away from him over the brink of the quarry. He lifted his fist and shook it--and just as suddenly dropped it. The trembling passed, and he broke out into a cold sweat of fear. "God ha' mercy!" he muttered. "If--if he's killed? He shouldn't ha' plagued me--he shouldn't ha' dared me! It was more than flesh and blood could stand, and--Lord ha' mercy, what's to be done?" The autumn twilight was creeping over the moor. The sun had set behind the far-off western hills just before Mallalieu and Stoner had met, and while they talked dusk had come on. The moorlands were now growing dark and vague, and it seemed to Mallalieu that as the light failed the silence increased. He looked round him, fearful lest any of the shepherds of the district had come up to take a Sunday glance at their flocks. And once he thought he saw a figure at a little distance away along the edge of the trees, and he strained and strained his eyes in its direction--and concluded it was nothing. Presently he strained his eyes in another way--he crept cautiously to the edge of the quarry, and looked over the broken railing, and far down on the limestone rocks beneath he saw Stoner, lying on his back, motionless.