Sick at heart, and utterly overcome by the sudden and awful tragedy to which he had been an enforced silent witness, David Helmsley had now but one idea, and that was at once to leave the scene of horror which, like a ghastly nightmare, scarred his vision and dizzied his brain.

Stumbling feebly along, and seeming to those who by chance noticed him, no more than a poor old tramp terrified out of his wits by the grief and confusion which prevailed, he made his way gradually through the crowd now pressing closely round the dead, and went forth into the village street.

He held the little dog Charlie nestled under his coat, where he had kept it hidden all the evening,--the tiny creature was shivering violently with that strange consciousness of the atmosphere of death which is instinctive to so many animals,--and a vague wish to soothe its fears helped him for the moment to forget his own feelings.

He would not trust himself to look again at Tom o' the Gleam, stretched lifeless on the ground with his slaughtered child clasped in his arms; he could not speak to any one of the terrified people.

He heard the constables giving hurried orders for the removal of the bodies, and he saw two more police officers arrive and go into the stableyard of the inn, there to take the number of the motor-car and write down the full deposition of that potentate of the pictorial press, James Brookfield.