life was changed.

This story is not of my own life, and I have no wish to enter into the
curious and saddening experiences which stood between me and the child
of Ginger Stott for nearly six years. In that time my thoughts strayed
now and again to that cottage in the little hamlet on those wooded
hills. Often I thought "When I have time I will go and see that child
again if he is alive." But as the years passed, the memory of him grew
dim, even the memory of his father was blurred over by a thousand new
impressions. So it chanced that for nearly six years I heard no word of
Stott and his supernormal infant, and then chance again intervened. My
long period of sorrow came to an end almost as suddenly as it had begun,
and by a coincidence I was once more entangled in the strange web of the
abnormal.

In this story of Victor Stott I have bridged these six years in the
pages that follow. In doing this I have been compelled to draw to a
certain extent on my imagination, but the main facts are true. They have
been gathered from first-hand authority only, from Henry Challis, from
Mrs. Stott, and from her husband; though none, I must confess, has been
checked by that soundest of all authorities, Victor Stott himself, who
might have given me every particular in accurate detail, had it not been
for those peculiarities of his which will be explained fully in the
proper place.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] See the Teutsche Bibliothek and Schoneich's account of the child of
Lubeck.

PART TWO

THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WONDER

PART TWO

THE CHILDHOOD OF THE WONDER

CHAPTER IV

THE MANNER OF HIS BIRTH

I

Stoke-Underhill lies in the flat of the valley that separates the
Hampden from the Quainton Hills. The main road from London to Ailesworth
does not pass through Stoke, but from the highway you can see the ascent
of the bridge over the railway, down the vista of a straight mile of
side road; and, beyond, a glimpse of scattered cottages. That is all,
and as a matter of fact, no one who is not keeping a sharp look-out
would ever notice the village, for the eye is drawn to admire the bluff
of Deane Hill, the highest point of the Hampdens, which lowers over the
little hamlet of Stoke and gives it a second name; and to the church
tower of Chilborough Beacon, away to the right, another landmark.

The attraction which Stoke-Underhill held for Stott, lay not in its
seclusion or its picturesqueness but in its nearness t