Tom o' the Gleam stretched forth his hands with an eloquent gesture of passion.
"Look at him lying there!" he cried--"Only a child--a little child! So pretty and playful!--all his joy was in the birds and flowers! The robins knew him and would perch on his shoulder,--he would call to the cuckoo,--he would race the swallow,--he would lie in the grass and sing with the skylark and talk to the daisies.

He was happy with the simplest things--and when we put him to bed in his little hammock under the trees, he would smile up at the stars and say: 'Mother's up there! Good-night, mother!' Oh, the lonely trees, and the empty hammock! Oh, my lad!--my little pretty lad! Murdered! Murdered! Gone from me for ever! For ever! God! God!" Reeling heavily forward, he sank in a crouching heap beside the child's dead body and snatched it into his embrace, kissing the little cold lips and cheeks and eyelids again and again, and pressing it with frantic fervour against his breast.
"The dark hour!" he muttered--"the dark hour! To-day when I came away over the moors I felt it creeping upon me! Last night it whispered to me, and I felt its cold breath hissing against my ears! When I climbed down the rocks to the seashore, I heard it wailing in the waves!--and through the hollows of the rocks it shrieked an unknown horror at me! Who was it that said to-day--'He is only a child after all, and he might be taken from you'?
I remember!--it was Miss Tranter who spoke--and she was sorry afterwards--ah, yes!--she was sorry!--but it was the spirit of the hour that moved her to the utterance of a warning--she could not help herself,--and I--I should have been more careful!--I should not have left my little one for a moment,--but I never thought any harm could come to him--no, never to _him_! I was always sure God was too good for that!" Moaning drearily, he rocked the dead boy to and fro.
"Kiddie--my Kiddie!" he murmured--"Little one with my love's eyes!--heart's darling with my love's face! Don't go to sleep, Kiddie!--not just yet!--wake up and kiss me once!--only once again, Kiddie!" "Oh, Tom!" sobbed Elizabeth,--"Oh, poor, poor Tom!" At the sound of her voice he raised his head and looked up at her.

There was a strange expression on his face,--a fixed and terrible stare in his eyes.

Suddenly he broke into a wild laugh.
"Ha-ha!" he cried.

"Poor Tom! Tom o' the Gleam! That's me!--the me that was not always me! Not always me--no!--not always Tom o' the Gleam! It was a bold life I led in the woods long ago!--a life full of sunshine and laughter--a life for a man with man's blood in his veins! Away out in the land that once was old Provence, we jested and sang the hours away,--the women with their guitars and mandolines--the men with their wild dances and tambourines,--and love was the keynote of the music--love!--always love! Love in the sunshine!--love under the moonbeams!--bright eyes in which to drown one's soul,--red lips on which to crush one's heart!--Ah, God!--such days when we were young! 'Ah! Craignons de perdre un seul jour, De la belle saison de l'amour!'" He sang these lines in a rich baritone, clear and thrilling with passion, and the men grouped about him, not understanding what he sang, glanced at one another with an uneasy sense of fear.