His nerves were shaken, and he felt himself to be mentally, as well as physically, distressed by the strange chance which had associated him against his will with such a grim drama of passion and revenge.

He remembered seeing the fateful motor swing down that precipitous road near Cleeve,--he recalled its narrow escape from a complete upset at the end of the declivity when it had swerved round the corner and rushed on,--how little he had dreamed that a child's life had just been torn away by its reckless wheels!--and that child the all-in-the-world to Tom o' the Gleam! Tom must have tracked the motor by following some side-lane or short cut known only to himself, otherwise Helmsley thought he would hardly have escaped seeing him.

But, in any case, the slow and trudging movements of an old man must have lagged far, far behind those of the strong, fleet-footed gypsy to whom the wildest hills and dales, cliffs and sea caves were all familiar ground.
Like a voice from the grave, the reply Tom had given to Matt Peke at the "Trusty Man," when Matt asked him where he had come from, rang back upon his ears--"From the caves of Cornwall! From picking up drift on the shore and tracking seals to their lair in the hollows of the rocks! All sport, Matt! I live like a gentleman born, keeping or killing at my pleasure!" Shuddering at this recollection, Helmsley pressed on in the teeth of the blast, and a sudden shower of rain scudded by, stinging him in the face with the sharpness of needlepoints.

The gale was so high, and the blown dust so thick on all sides, that he could scarcely see where he was going, but his chief effort was to get out of Minehead and away from all contact with human beings--for the time.

In this he succeeded very soon.
Once well beyond the town, he did not pause to make a choice of roads.
He only sought to avoid the coast line, rightly judging that way to lie most open and exposed to the storm,--moreover the wind swooped in so fiercely from the sea, and the rising waves made such a terrific roaring, that, for the mere sake of greater quietness, he turned aside and followed a path which appeared to lead invitingly into some deep hollow of the hills.