crossed her face, but she was silent. He watched her
narrowly.

"I've been off my head, haven't I?" he queried, affecting a certain
brusqueness in his tone--"Talking a lot of nonsense, I suppose?"

"Yes--sometimes,"--she replied--"But only when you were _very_ bad."

"And what did I say?"

She hesitated a moment, and he grew impatient.

"Come, come!" he demanded, irritably--"What did I say?"

She looked at him candidly.

"You talked mostly about 'Tom o' the Gleam,'"--she answered--"That was a
poor gypsy well known in these parts. He had just one little child left
to him in the world--its mother was dead. Some rich lord driving a motor
car down by Cleeve ran over the poor baby and killed it--and Tom----"

"Tom tracked the car to Blue Anchor, where he found the man who had run
over his child and killed _him_!" said Helmsley, with grim
satisfaction--"I saw it done!"

Mary shuddered.

"I saw it done!" repeated Helmsley--"And I think it was rightly done!
But--I saw Tom himself die of grief and madness--with his dead child in
his arms--and _that!_--that broke something in my heart and brain and
made me think God was cruel!"

She bent over him, and arranged his pillows more comfortably.

"I knew Tom,"--she said, presently, in a soft voice--"He was a wild
creature, but very kind and good for all that. Some folks said he had
been born a gentleman, and that a quarrel with his family had made him
take to the gypsy life--but that's only a story. Anyway his little
child--'kiddie'--as it used to be called, was the dearest little fellow
in the world--so playful and affectionate!--I don't wonder Tom went mad
when his one joy was killed! And you saw it all, you say?"

"Yes, I saw it all!" And Helmsley, with a faint sigh half closed his
eyes as he spoke--"I was tramping from Watchett,--and the motor passed
me on my way, but I did not see the child run over. I meant to get a
lodging at Blue Anchor--and while I was having my supper at the public
house Tom came in,--and--and it was all over in less than fifteen
minutes! A horrible sight--a horrible, horrible sight! I see it now!--I
shall never forget it!"

"Enough to make you ill, poor dear!" said Mary, gently--"Don't think of
it now! Try and sleep a little. You mustn't talk too much. Poor Tom is
dead and buried now, and his little child with him--God rest them both!
It's better he should have died than lived without anyone to love him in
the world."

"That's true!" And o