in my arms----" He broke
off, trembling violently, then with an effort he raised his head and
turned his eyes with a wild stare upon all around him. "We are only poor
folk!" he went on, in a firmer voice. "Only gypsies, tinkers,
road-menders, labourers, and the like! We cannot fight against the rich
who ride us down! There's no law for us, because we can't pay for it. We
can't fee the counsel or dine the judge! The rich can pay. They can
trample us down under their devilish motor-cars, and obliging juries
will declare our wrongs and injuries and deaths to be mere 'accident' or
'misadventure'! But if _they_ can kill, by God!--so can _we_! And if the
law lets them off for murdering our children, we must take the law into
our own hands and murder _them_ in turn--ay! even if we swing for it!"

No one spoke. The women still sobbed convulsively, but otherwise there
was a great silence. Tom o' the Gleam stretched forth his hands with an
eloquent gesture of passion.

"Look at him lying there!" he cried--"Only a child--a little child! So
pretty and playful!--all his joy was in the birds and flowers! The
robins knew him and would perch on his shoulder,--he would call to the
cuckoo,--he would race the swallow,--he would lie in the grass and sing
with the skylark and talk to the daisies. He was happy with the simplest
things--and when we put him to bed in his little hammock under the
trees, he would smile up at the stars and say: 'Mother's up there!
Good-night, mother!' Oh, the lonely trees, and the empty hammock! Oh, my
lad!--my little pretty lad! Murdered! Murdered! Gone from me for ever!
For ever! God! God!"

Reeling heavily forward, he sank in a crouching heap beside the child's
dead body and snatched it into his embrace, kissing the little cold lips
and cheeks and eyelids again and again, and pressing it with frantic
fervour against his breast.

"The dark hour!" he muttered--"the dark hour! To-day when I came away
over the moors I felt it creeping upon me! Last night it whispered to
me, and I felt its cold breath hissing against my ears! When I climbed
down the rocks to the seashore, I heard it wailing in the waves!--and
through the hollows of the rocks it shrieked an unknown horror at me!
Who was it that said to-day--'He is only a child after all, and he might
be taken from you'? I remember!--it was Miss Tranter who spoke--and she
was sorry afterwards--ah, yes!--she was sorry!--but it was the spirit of
the hour that move