course! That's quite common! We're always
running over something or other, aren't we, Brookie?"

"Always!" declared that gentleman pleasantly. "Really it's half the
fun!"

"Positively it is, don't-cher-know!" and his lordship played again with
his enamelled pig--"But it's not our fault. If things will get into our
way, we can't wait till they get out. We're bound to ride over them. Do
you remember that old hen, Brookie?"

Brookfield spluttered into a laugh, and nodded in the affirmative.

"There it was skipping over the road in front of us in as great a hurry
as ever hen was," went on Wrotham. "Going back to its family of eggs per
express waddle! Whiz! Pst--and all its eggs and waddles were over! By
Jove, how we screamed! Ha--ha--ha!--he--he--he!"

Lord Wrotham's laugh resembled that laugh peculiar to "society"
folk,--the laugh civil-sniggering, which is just a tone between the
sheep's bleat and the peewit's cry. But no one laughed in response, and
no one spoke. Some heavy spell was in the air like a cloud shadowing a
landscape, and an imaginative onlooker would have been inclined to think
that this imperceptible mystic darkness had come in with Tom o' the
Gleam and was centralising itself round him alone. Brookfield, seeing
that his lordly patron was inclined to talk, and that he was evidently
anxious to narrate various "car" incidents, similar to the hen episode,
took up the conversation and led it on.

"It is really quite absurd," he said, "for any one of common sense to
argue that a motorist can, could, or should pull up every moment for the
sake of a few stray animals, or even people, when they don't seem to
know or care where they are going. Now think of that child to-day! What
an absolute little idiot! Gathering wild thyme and holding it out to the
car going full speed! No wonder we knocked it over!"

The hostess of the inn looked up quickly.

"I hope it was not hurt?" she said.

"Oh dear no!" answered Lord Wrotham lightly. "It just fell back and
turned a somersault in the grass,--evidently enjoying itself. It had a
narrow escape though!"

Tom o' the Gleam stared fixedly at him. Once or twice he essayed to
speak, but no sound came from his twitching lips. Presently, with an
effort, he found his voice.

"Did you--did you stop the car and go back to see--to see if--if it was
all right?" he asked, in curiously harsh, monotonous accents.

"Stop the car? Go back? By Jove, I should think not indeed! I'd