morning, two days after Stott had left the cottage, Ellen Mary was
startled by the sudden entrance of her child into the sitting-room. He
toddled in hastily from the garden, and pointed with excitement through
the window.

Ellen Mary was frightened; she had never seen her child other than
deliberate, calm, judicial, in all his movements. In a sudden spasm of
motherly love she bent to pick him up, to caress him.

"No," said the Wonder, with something that approached disgust in his
tone and attitude. "No," he repeated. "What's 'e want 'angin' round
'ere? Send 'im off." He pointed again to the window.

Ellen Mary looked out and saw a grinning, slobbering obscenity at the
gate. Stott had scared the idiot away, but in some curious, inexplicable
manner he had learned that his persecutor and enemy had gone, and he had
returned, and had made overtures to the child that walked so sedately up
and down the path of the little garden.

Ellen Mary went out. "You be off," she said.

"A-ba, a-ba-ba," bleated the idiot, and pointed at the house.

"Be off, I tell you!" said Ellen Mary fiercely. But still the idiot
babbled and pointed.

Ellen Mary stooped to pick up a stick. The idiot blenched; he understood
that movement well enough, though it was a stone he anticipated, not a
stick; with a foolish cry he dropped his arms and slouched away down the
lane.

CHAPTER VII

HIS DEBT TO HENRY CHALLIS

I

Challis was out of England for more than three years after that one
brief intrusion of his into the affairs of Mr. and Mrs. Stott. During
the interval he was engaged upon those investigations, the results of
which are embodied in his monograph on the primitive peoples of the
Melanesian Archipelago. It may be remembered that he followed Dr. W. H.
R. Rivers' and Dr. C. G. Seligmann's inquiry into the practice and
theory of native customs. Challis developed his study more particularly
with reference to the earlier evolution of Totemism, and he was able by
his patient work among the Polynesians of Tikopia and Ontong Java, and
his comparisons of those sporadic tribes with the Papuasians of Eastern
New Guinea, to correct some of the inferences with regard to the origins
of exogamy made by Dr. J. G. Frazer in his great work on that subject,
published some years before. A summary of Challis's argument may be
found in vol. li. of the _Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute_.

When he returned to England, Challis shut hims