darling!--the pretty little man!"

And she fell on her knees beside the tiny corpse and gave way to a wild
fit of weeping.

There was an awful silence, broken only by her sobbing. Men turned away
and covered their eyes--Brookfield edged himself stealthily through the
little crowd and sneaked out into the open air--and the officers of the
law stood inactive. Helmsley felt the room whirling about him in a
sickening blackness, and sat down to steady himself, the stinging tears
rising involuntarily in his throat and almost choking him.

"Oh, Kiddie!" wailed Elizabeth again, looking up in plaintive
appeal--"Oh, mother, mother, see! Grace come here! Kiddie's dead! The
poor innocent little child!" They came at her call, and knelt with her,
crying bitterly, and smoothing back with tender hands the thickly
tangled dark curls of the smiling dead thing, with the fragrance of wild
thyme clinging about it, as though it were a broken flower torn from the
woods where it had blossomed. Tom o' the Gleam watched them, and his
broad chest heaved with a sudden gasping sigh.

"You all know now," he said slowly, staring with strained piteous eyes
at the little lifeless body--"you understand,--the motor killed my
Kiddie! He was playing on the road--I was close by among the trees--I
saw the cursed car coming full speed downhill--I rushed to take the boy,
but was too late--he cried once--and then--silence! All the laughter
gone out of him--all the life and love----" He paused with a
shudder.--"I carried him all the way, and followed the car," he went
on--"I would have followed it to the world's end! I ran by a short cut
down near the sea,--and then--I saw the thing break down. I thanked God
for that! I tracked the murderers here,--I meant to kill the man who
killed my child!--and I have done it!" He paused again. Then he held out
his hands and looked at the constable.

"May I--before I go--take him in my arms--and kiss him?" he asked.

The chief officer nodded. He could not speak, but he unfastened Tom's
manacles and threw them on the floor. Then Tom himself moved feebly and
unsteadily to where the women knelt beside his dead child. They rose as
he approached, but did not turn away.

"You have hearts, you women!" he said faintly. "You know what it is to
love a child! And Kiddie,--Kiddie was such a happy little fellow!--so
strong and hearty!--so full of life! And now--now he's stiff and cold!
Only this morning he was jumping and laughing