It is all mystery! Now, suppose Mary were to die?
Suppose she were, at this very moment, dead ?" Such a horror came over him as this idea presented itself to his mind that he trembled from head to foot, and his brain grew dizzy.

He had walked for a longer time than he knew since the cart in which he had ridden part of the way had left him at about four miles away from Weircombe, and he felt that he must sit down on the roadside and rest for a bit before going further.

How cruel, how fiendish it would be, he continued to imagine, if Mary were dead! It would be devil's work!--and he would have no more faith in God! He would have lost his last hope,--and he would fall into the grave a despairing atheist and blasphemer! Why, if Mary were dead, then the world was a snare, and heaven a delusion!--truth a trick, and goodness a lie! Then--was all the past, the present, and future hanging for him like a jewel on the finger of one woman?
He was bound to admit that it was so.

He was also bound to admit that all the past, present, and future had, for poor Tom o' the Gleam, been centred in one little child.

And--God ?--no, not God--but a devil, using as his tools devilish men,--had killed that child! Then, might not that devil kill Mary?
His head swam, and a sickening sense of bafflement and incompetency came over him.