his throat and filling his mouth. As he was aware that one of his lungs was gone, he suspected this to be the starting of a hemorrhage. He stopped fighting and threw himself on the ground, a stream of blood gushed over his lips.
This was of itself a grave misfortune, but what rendered it almost irretrievable was that his companions, when they felt the warm blood spraying over their hands and saw him sinking down, on the ground, believed that they had murdered him, and took to flight. He was left deserted! The hemorrhage, it is true, gradually ceased, but directly he made the slightest effort to rise the blood welled forth again.
It was not a particularly cold night, but the dampness and chill began to torture him as he lay prostrate on the ground. He had a feeling that he was likely to perish unless someone came to his rescue and took him to a place of shelter. To all intents and purposes he was lying in the very heart of the town, and, as it was New Year's Eve, there were multitudes of people up, and he could hear them walking about the streets that ran round the shrubbery—but not a soul entered it. He could even hear the murmur of their voices! It was hard, he thought, that he should perish for lack of help, when help was so near at hand.
He lay waiting for a while, but the cold tortured him worse and worse, and, when he realised that it was impossible for him to^get on his feet, be determined at any rate, to shout for assistance.
Just as he was uttering his cry for help the clock in the tower above him began striking!
The human voice was so completely stifled in that loud metallic clang that nobody noticed his cry of distress. The hemorrhage started afresh, and it was now so extremely violent that he could hardly help thinking that all the'blood in bis body was about to leave it—if it had not, as it seemed, already done so.
"It can't really be possible, that I am to die now, while the clock is actually striking midnight! " he thought, but he had a feeling that he was going out like a burnt-out candle.
He sank down into darkness, and unconsciousness at the very moment that the last booming stroke of the clock died away—heralding the birth of the New Year.
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