There was only a little sensation left in poor Compton at that juncture, but that little cried out against being beaten down in such a manner by a man whom he had before considered his inferior in muscular power, and whom he had set out to flog. The bull-dog within him wished to rise and make another effort, but for a moment his eyes _would not_ open and his head would not clear sufficiently for him to make any effort at regaining his lost perpendicular. When he thought he heard a groan and a loud "thud" on the ground, and he did manage to struggle to a sitting position, the sight that met his eyes was nearly sufficient to drive him back into his partial insensibility, amazement and horror being about equally compounded in the spectacle. Carlton Brand lay at length on the ground, his face set in a frightful spasm, a thin white froth issuing from the set lips, the eyes closed, and not even a quiver of motion in the limbs. Dick Compton sprang up, then, with a supernatural energy born of absolute fright, and bent over his prostrate antagonist. To all appearance he was dead!--dead as if he had been lying there for the last century! The frightened farmer put his hand to his temples, his pulses and his heart, and found no motion whatever. Then the dreadful fear took possession of him that his own last blow, which he remembered aiming at the throat of the other, might have taken effect there at the same moment when he was himself struck and prostrated--that some vital part of the throat might have been touched and death instantly ensued! To say that Dick Compton was frightened and even horrified at this unexpected issue of the pugilistic combat which he had forced, is indeed to put the case very mildly. He was literally paralyzed, for the moment, with consternation. What was his fate?--to be a homicide! And--good God!--here another thought took possession of him. He had left Kitty Hood at the school-house, only a little while before, himself angry and in a dangerous mood, and with his last words threatening personal violence against Carlton Brand! If he should be dead--and there seemed to be no hope to the contrary--what words of his could ever persuade the school-mistress that he had not entertained enough of jealousy and anger against the lawyer to desire his death?--and how far would not Kitty's evidence go in proving before a criminal court that he was an intentional murderer? Such reflections are not pleasant, to say the least! A very few of them go a great way in a man's life. Those who have been placed, even for one moment, in the belief that they have suddenly become homicides, need not be told how far beyond all other horrors is the feeling: those who have missed the sensation, may thank God with all reverence for having spared them one of the untold agonies which belong only to the damned!