he
people in the principal thoroughfare struggling with the capricious
attacks of the blast, which tore their hats off and sent them spinning
across the road, and played mischievous havoc with women's skirts,
blowing them up to the knees, and making a great exhibition of feet, few
of which were worth looking at from any point of beauty or fitness. And
then, all at once, amid the whirling of the gale, he heard a hoarse
stentorian shouting--"Awful Murder! Local Crime! Murder of a Nobleman!
Murder at Blue Anchor! Latest details!" and he started precipitately
forward, walking hurriedly along with as much nervous horror as though
he had been guiltily concerned in the deed with which the town was
ringing. Two or three boys ran past him, with printed placards in their
hands, which they waved in front of them, and on which in thick black
letters could be seen:--"Murder of Lord Wrotham! Death of the Murderer!
Appalling Tragedy at Blue Anchor!" And, for a few seconds, amid the
confusion caused by the wind, and the wild clamour of the news-vendors,
he felt as if every one were reeling pell-mell around him like persons
on a ship at sea,--men with hats blown off,--women and children running
aslant against the gale with hair streaming,--all eager to purchase the
first papers which contained the account of a tragedy, enacted, as it
were, at their very doors. Outside a little glass and china shop at the
top of a rather hilly street a group of workingmen were standing, with
the papers they had just bought in their hands, and Helmsley, as he
trudged by, with stooping figure and bent head set against the wind,
lingered near them a moment to hear them discuss the news.

"Ah, poor Tom!" exclaimed one--"Gone at last! I mind me well how he used
to say he'd die a bad death!"

"What's a bad death?" queried another, gruffly--"And what's the truth
about this here business anyhow? Newspapers is allus full o' lies.
There's a lot about a lord that's killed, but precious little about
Tom!"

"That's so!" said an old farmer, who with spectacles on was leaning his
back against the wall of the shop near which they stood, to shelter
himself a little from the force of the gale, while he read the paper he
held--"See here,--this lord was driving his motor along by Cleeve, and
ran over Tom's child,--why, that's the poor Kiddie we used to see Tom
carrying for miles on his shoulder----"

"Ah, the poor lamb!" And a commiserating groan ran through the little