nning. It's hard to say how early I began to believe I could
see things that were going to happen. By the hour I used to shake the
dice on the billiard-table at Castlegarry, trying to see with my eyes
shut the numbers about to come up. Of course now and then I saw the
right numbers; and it deepened the conviction that if I cultivated
the gift I'd be able to be right nearly every time. When I went to a
horse-race I used to fasten my mind on the signal, and tried to see
beforehand the number of the winner. Again sometimes I was very right
indeed, and that deepened my confidence in myself. I was always at it.
I'd try and guess--try and see--the number of the hymn which was on the
paper in the vicar's hand before he gave it out, and I would bet with
myself on it. I would bet with myself or with anybody available on any
conceivable thing--the minutes late a train would be; the pints of
milk a cow would give; the people who would be at a hunt breakfast; the
babies that would be christened on a Sunday; the number of eyes in a
peck of raw potatoes. I was out against the universe. But it wasn't
serious at all--just a boy's mania--till one day my father met me in
London when I came down from Oxford, and took me to Thwaite's Club
in St. James's Street. There was the thing that finished me. I was
twenty-one, and restless-minded, and with eyes wide open.

"Well, he took me to Thwaite's where I was to become a member, and
after a little while he left me to go and have a long pow-wow with the
committee--he was a member of it. He told me to make myself at home,
and I did so as soon as his back was turned. Almost the first thing with
which I became sociable was a book which, at my first sight of it, had a
fascination for me. The binding was very old, and the leather was worn,
as you will see the leather of a pocketbook, till it looks and feels
like a nice soap. That book brought me here."

He paused, and in the silence the Young Doctor pushed a glass of milk
and brandy towards him. He sipped the contents. The others were in
a state of tension. Kitty Tynan's eyes were fixed on him as though
hypnotised, and the Young Doctor was scarcely less interested; while the
widow knitted harder and faster than she had ever done, and she could
knit very fast indeed.

"It was the betting-book of Thwaite's, and it dated back almost to the
time of the conquest of Quebec. Great men dead and gone long ago--near
a hundred and fifty years ago-had put down