visited the house."

Challis nodded. "My own experience, exactly. And did you return that
look of his?"

"Not willingly. It was, I confess, not altogether a pleasant
experience."

"Ah!"

Challis was silent for a few moments, and it was Walters who took up the
interrogatory.

"Challis!"

"Yes?"

"Have you, now, some feeling of, shall I say, distaste for the child? Do
you feel that you have no wish to see it again?"

"Is it that exactly?" parried Challis.

"If not, what is it?" asked Walters.

"In my own case," said Challis, "I can find an analogy only in my
attitude towards my 'head' at school. In his presence I was always
intimidated by my consciousness of his superior learning. I felt
unpleasantly ignorant, small, negligible. Curiously enough, I see
something of the same expression of feeling in the attitude of that
feeble Crashaw to myself. Well, one makes an attempt at self-assertion,
a kind of futile bragging; and one knows the futility of it--at the
time. But, afterwards, one finds excuse and seeks to belittle the
personality and attainment of the person one feared. At school we did
not love the 'head,' and, as schoolboys will, we were always trying to
run him down. 'Next time he rags me, I'll cheek him,' was our usual
boast--but we never did. Let's be honest, Walters, are not you and I
exhibiting much the same attitude towards this extraordinary child?
Didn't he produce the effect upon you that I've described? Didn't you
have a little of the 'fifth form' feeling,--a boy under examination?"

Walters smiled and screwed his mouth on one side. "The thing is so
absurd," he said.

"That is what we used to say at school," replied Challis.

V

The Stotts' move to Pym was not marked by any incident. Mrs. Stott and
her boy were not unduly stared upon as they left Stoke--the children
were in school--and their entry into the new cottage was uneventful.

They moved on a Thursday. On Sunday morning they had their first
visitor.

He came mooning round the fence that guarded the Stotts' garden from the
little lane--it was hardly more than a footpath. He had a great
shapeless head that waggled heavily on his shoulders, his eyes were
lustreless, and his mouth hung open, frequently his tongue lagged out.
He made strange, inhuman noises. "A-ba-ba," was his nearest approach to
speech.

"Now, George," called Mrs. Stott, "look at that. It's Mrs. 'Arrison's
boy what Mrs. Reade's spoke about. Now, is 'e anythink