chen for some
butter, flew back and anointed the bruise.

'It fell out itself!' Tom said again.

'Whatever would the minister think?' Mrs. Knight wondered.

'It fell out itself!' said Tom.

Mr. Knight whipped Tom, and his Aunt Annie put him to bed for the rest
of the day. In the settled opinion of Mrs. Knight, Tom was punished for
attempting to murder her baby. But Mr. Knight insisted that the
punishment was for lying. As for the baptism, it had necessarily to be
postponed for four weeks, since the ceremony was performed at the Great
Queen Street Chapel only on the first Sunday in the month.

'I never touched it!' Tom asseverated solemnly the next day. 'It fell
out itself!'

And he clung to the statement, day after day, with such obstinacy that
at length the three adults, despite the protests of reason, began to
think that conceivably, just conceivably, the impossible was
possible--in regard to one particular baby. Mrs. Knight had often
commented on the perfectly marvellous muscular power of her baby's hand
when it clutched hers, and signs were not wanting to convince the
parents and the aunt that the infant was no ordinary infant, but indeed
extraordinary and wonderful to the last degree.

On the fourth day, when Tom had asserted for about the hundredth time,
'It fell out itself,' his Aunt Susan kissed him and gave him a
sweetmeat. Tom threw it away, but in the end, after much coaxing, he
consented to enjoy it. Aunt Susan detected the finger of Providence in
recent events, and one night she whispered to her husband: 'Lovey, I
want you to call him what you said.'

And so it occurred, at the christening, that when the minister leaned
over the Communion-rail to take the wonder-child from its mother's
arms, its father whispered into the minister's ear a double name.

'Henry Shakspere----' began the minister with lifted hand.

And the baby smiled confidently upwards.

CHAPTER IV

AGED TWELVE

'Quick! He's coming!'

It was Aunt Annie who uttered the dramatic whisper, and as she did so
she popped a penknife on to an empty plate in front of an empty chair at
the breakfast-table. Mr. Knight placed a silver watch and also,
separately, a silver chain by the side of the weapon; and, lastly, Mrs.
Knight had the happy inspiration of covering these articles with the
empty slop-basin.

The plotters sat back in their chairs and tried to keep their guilty
eyes off the overturned basin. 'Two slices, Annie?' sa