When Haldane saw that his antagonist did not move, time was given him to think; he experienced a terrible revulsion. He remembered his profanity and brutal rage, he felt that he had broken down utterly. He was overwhelmed by his moral defeat, and covering his face with his hands, he groaned "Lost, lost!"
"By jocks," exclaimed a rude, half-grown fellow, "that clip would have felled an ox."
"Do you think he's dead?" asked the slattern girl, now thoroughly alarmed at the consequences of the blow she had given.
"Dead!" cried Haldane, catching the word, and, pushing all aside, he knelt over his prostrate foe.
"Water, bring water, for God's sake!" he said eagerly, lifting up the unconscious man.
It was brought and dashed in his face. A moment later, to Haldane's infinite relief he revived, and after a bewildered stare at the crowd around him, fixed his eyes on the youth who had dealt the blow, and then a consciousness of all that had occurred seemed to return. He showed his teeth in impotent rage for a moment, as some wild animal might have done, and then rose unsteadily to his feet.
"Go back to your work, all on ye," thundered the foreman, who, now that the sport was over, was bent on making a great show of his zeal; "as for you two bull-dogs, you shall pay dearly for this; and let me say to you, Mister Haldane, that the pious dodge won't answer any longer."
A moment later, with the exception of flushed faces and excited whisperings, the large and crowded apartment wore its ordinary aspect, and the machinery clanked on as monotonously as ever.
Almost as mechanically Haldane moved in the routine of his labor, but the bitterness of despair was in his heart.
He forgot that he would probably be discharged that day; he forgot that a dark and uncertain future was before him. He only remembered his rage and profanity, and they seemed to him damning proofs that all he had felt, hoped, and believed was delusion.