The shock was too much for the nerves of the poor beadle of St. Dunstan's, and on the instant he fainted, and fell huddled up at the bottom of the little place.
Todd immediately stood upon the prostrate form of the parochial authority.
"Ha! ha!" he laughed, "I have him now, and I shall be able to leave St. Dunstan's yet."
He trampled as hard upon the beadle as he could, and then he took the clasp knife from his pocket, and said—
"It will be better to kill him. Rise, idiot, rise, and tell me if you can, why I should not cut your throat?"
The beadle neither moved nor spoke.
"Is he dead?" said Todd. "Has the fright killed him? It is strange; but I have heard of such things. Why it surely must be so. The sudden shock has been the death of him, and it would be a waste of time for me to touch him. He is dead—he must be dead!"
Todd, full of this feeling, retreated two or three steps down the little winding staircase of the pulpit, and then reaching in his hand, he caught hold of the poor beadle by the hair of his head, and dragged him sufficiently out of the pulpit to be enabled to look him in the face. The eyes were closed, the inspiration seemed to be stopped, and there was, in truth, every appearance of death about the unfortunate functionary of the old church.
"Yes, dead," said Todd; "but it will be better for me. He will be found here, and as no violence will show upon him, the doctors will learnedly pronounce it a case of apoplexy, and there will arise no suspicion of my having been here at all. It is much better, oh, much, than as if I had killed him."
With this feeling, Todd pushed what he considered to be the dead body of the beadle back into the pulpit again, and then himself rapidly descended the little spiral flight of stairs.