Then he took hold of a leaf,
and was carefully tearing it out, when two things happened. First,
something black seemed to drop upon the white leaf and run down it, and
then as Eldred started and was turning to look behind him, a little dark
form appeared to rise out of the shadow behind the tree-trunk and from it
two arms enclosing a mass of blackness came before Eldred's face and
covered his head and neck. His legs and arms were wildly flourished, but
no sound came. Then, there was no more movement. Eldred was alone. He had
fallen back into the grass behind the tree-trunk. The book was cast into
the roadway. Garrett, his anger and suspicion gone for the moment at the
sight of this horrid struggle, rushed up with loud cries of 'Help!' and
so too, to his enormous relief, did a labourer who had just emerged from
a field opposite. Together they bent over and supported Eldred, but to no
purpose. The conclusion that he was dead was inevitable. 'Poor
gentleman!' said Garrett to the labourer, when they had laid him down,
'what happened to him, do you think?' 'I wasn't two hundred yards away,'
said the man, 'when I see Squire Eldred setting reading in his book, and
to my thinking he was took with one of these fits--face seemed to go all
over black.
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