He was tugging away at a high stack of rolls of undressed leather, which reached to the ceiling in one corner.

He pulled them too hastily, and the whole stack tumbled forward, and rolled heavily in all directions, raising a suffocating dust, through which the old man's figure seemed to loom up as through a fog, as he skipped to the right and left to escape the rolling bales.
"O Mr.Wheeler!" cried Mercy, "are you hurt ?" He laughed a choked laugh, more like a chuckle than like a laugh.
"He! he! child.

Dust don't hurt me.

Goin' to return to 't presently.

Made on 't! made on 't! Don't see why folks need be so 'fraid on 't! He! he! 'T is pretty choky, though." And he sat down on one of the leather rolls, and held his sides through a hard coughing fit.