rupted by tears, explained
that Tom o' the Gleam was a frequent customer of hers, and that she had
never thought badly of him.

"He was a bit excited to-night, but he wasn't drunk," she said. "He told
me he was ill, and asked for a glass of brandy. He looked as if he were
in great pain, and I gave him the brandy at once and asked him to step
inside the bar. But he wouldn't do that,--he just stood talking with the
gentlemen about motoring, and then something was said about a child
being knocked over by the motor,--and all of a sudden----"

Here her voice broke, and she sank on a seat half swooning, while
Elizabeth, her eldest girl, finished the story in low, trembling tones.
Tom o' the Gleam meanwhile stood rigidly upright and silent. To him the
chief officer of the law finally turned.

"Will you come with us quietly?" he asked, "or do you mean to give us
trouble?"

Tom lifted his dark eyes.

"I shall give no man any more trouble," he answered. "I shall go nowhere
save where I am taken. You need fear nothing from me now. But I must
speak."

The officer frowned warningly.

"You'd better not!" he said.

"I must!" repeated Tom. "You think,--all of you,--that I had no
cause--no provocation--to kill the man who lies there"--and he turned a
fierce glance upon the covered corpse, from which a dark stream of blood
was trickling slowly along the floor--"I swear before God that I _had_
cause!--and that my cause was just! I _had_ provocation!--the bitterest
and worst! That man was a murderer as surely as I am. Look yonder!" And
lifting his manacled hands he extended them towards the bench where lay
the bundle covered with horse-cloth, which he had carried in his arms
and set down when he had first entered the inn. "Look, I say!--and then
tell me I had no cause!"

With an uneasy glance one of the officers went up to the spot indicated,
and hurriedly, yet fearfully, lifted the horse-cloth and looked under
it. Then uttering an exclamation of horror and pity, he drew away the
covering altogether, and disclosed to view the dead body of a child,--a
little curly-headed lad,--lying as if it were asleep, a smile on its
pretty mouth, and a bunch of wild thyme clasped in the clenched fingers
of its small right hand.

"My God! It's Kiddie!"

The exclamation was uttered almost simultaneously by every one in the
room, and the girl Elizabeth sprang forward.

"Oh, not Kiddie!" she cried--"Oh, surely not Kiddie! Oh, the poor little