lost too
much time already through taking a wrong turning. The child was all
right enough."

"Are you sure?" muttered Tom thickly. "Are you--quite--sure?"

"Sure?" And Wrotham again had recourse to his eyeglass, which he stuck
in one eye, while he fixed his interlocutor with a supercilious glance.
"Of course I'm sure! What the devil d' ye take me for? It was a mere
beggar's brat anyhow--there are too many of such little wretches running
loose about the roads--regular nuisances--a few might be run over with
advantage--Hullo! What now? What's the matter? Keep your distance,
please!" For Tom suddenly threw up his clenched fists with an
inarticulate cry of rage, and now leaped towards Wrotham in the attitude
of a wild beast springing on its prey. "Hands off! Hands off, I say!
Damn you, leave me alone! Brookfield! Here! Some one get a hold of this
fellow! He's mad!"

But before Brookfield or any other man could move to his assistance, Tom
had pounced upon him with all the fury of a famished tiger.

"God curse you!" he panted, between the gasps of his labouring
breath--"God burn you for ever in Hell!"

Down on the ground he hurled him, clutching him round the neck, and
choking every attempt at a cry. Then falling himself in all his huge
height, breadth, and weight, upon Wrotham's prone body he crushed it
under and held it beneath him, while, with appalling swiftness and
vehemence, he plunged a drawn claspknife deep in his victim's throat,
hacking the flesh from left to right, from right to left with reckless
ferocity, till the blood spurted about him in horrid crimson jets, and
gushed in a dark pool on the floor.

Piercing screams from the women, groans and cries from the men, filled
the air, and the lately peaceful scene was changed to one of maddening
confusion. Brookfield rushed wildly through the open door of the inn
into the village street, yelling: "Help! Help! Murder! Help!" and in
less than five minutes the place was filled with an excited crowd.
"Tom!" "Tom o' the Gleam!" ran in frightened whispers from mouth to
mouth. David Helmsley, giddy with the sudden shock of terror, rose
shuddering from his place with a vague idea of instant flight in his
mind, but remained standing inert, half paralysed by sheer panic, while
several men surrounded Tom, and dragged him forcibly up from the ground
where he lay, still grasping his murdered man. As they wrenched the
gypsy's grappling arms away, Wrotham fell back on the flo