Then uttering an exclamation of horror and pity, he drew away the covering altogether, and disclosed to view the dead body of a child,--a little curly-headed lad,--lying as if it were asleep, a smile on its pretty mouth, and a bunch of wild thyme clasped in the clenched fingers of its small right hand.
"My God! It's Kiddie!" The exclamation was uttered almost simultaneously by every one in the room, and the girl Elizabeth sprang forward.
"Oh, not Kiddie!" she cried--"Oh, surely not Kiddie! Oh, the poor little darling!--the pretty little man!" And she fell on her knees beside the tiny corpse and gave way to a wild fit of weeping.
There was an awful silence, broken only by her sobbing.

Men turned away and covered their eyes--Brookfield edged himself stealthily through the little crowd and sneaked out into the open air--and the officers of the law stood inactive.

Helmsley felt the room whirling about him in a sickening blackness, and sat down to steady himself, the stinging tears rising involuntarily in his throat and almost choking him.
"Oh, Kiddie!" wailed Elizabeth again, looking up in plaintive appeal--"Oh, mother, mother, see! Grace come here! Kiddie's dead! The poor innocent little child!" They came at her call, and knelt with her, crying bitterly, and smoothing back with tender hands the thickly tangled dark curls of the smiling dead thing, with the fragrance of wild thyme clinging about it, as though it were a broken flower torn from the woods where it had blossomed.

Tom o' the Gleam watched them, and his broad chest heaved with a sudden gasping sigh.
"You all know now," he said slowly, staring with strained piteous eyes at the little lifeless body--"you understand,--the motor killed my Kiddie! He was playing on the road--I was close by among the trees--I saw the cursed car coming full speed downhill--I rushed to take the boy, but was too late--he cried once--and then--silence! All the laughter gone out of him--all the life and love----" He paused with a shudder.--"I carried him all the way, and followed the car," he went on--"I would have followed it to the world's end! I ran by a short cut down near the sea,--and then--I saw the thing break down.

I thanked God for that! I tracked the murderers here,--I meant to kill the man who killed my child!--and I have done it!" He paused again.