"I must!" repeated Tom. "You think,--all of you,--that I had no cause--no provocation--to kill the man who lies there"--and he turned a fierce glance upon the covered corpse, from which a dark stream of blood was trickling slowly along the floor--"I swear before God that I _had_ cause!--and that my cause was just! I _had_ provocation!--the bitterest and worst! That man was a murderer as surely as I am. Look yonder!" And lifting his manacled hands he extended them towards the bench where lay the bundle covered with horse-cloth, which he had carried in his arms and set down when he had first entered the inn. "Look, I say!--and then tell me I had no cause!" With an uneasy glance one of the officers went up to the spot indicated, and hurriedly, yet fearfully, lifted the horse-cloth and looked under it. 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.