tage of a certain physical delicacy. This was also
the view taken of him by his half-brothers, and by two out of his three
step-sisters. But the three who really loved him, his mother, his nurse,
and his eldest half-sister, Betty, were convinced that the child was
either possessed of a curious, uncanny gift of--was it second sight?--as
his old nurse entirely and his mother half, believed, or, as Dr.
O'Farrell asserted, some abnormal development of his subconscious self.
All three were ruefully aware that Timmy was often--well, his mother
called it "sly," his sister called it "fanciful," his nurse by the good
old nursery term, "deceitful."

It was this unlovable attribute of his which made it so difficult to know
whether Timmy believed in the positive assertions occasionally made by
him concerning his intimate acquaintance with the world of the unseen.
That he could sometimes visualise what was coming to pass, especially
if it was of an unpleasant, disturbing nature, was, so his mother
considered, an undeniable fact. But sometimes the gift lay in abeyance
for weeks, even for months. That had been the case, as Mrs. Tosswill had
told Dr. O'Farrell, for a long time now--to be precise, since March,
when, to the dismay of those about him he had predicted an accident in
the hunting field which actually took place.

Timmy walked on up the steep bit of road which led to the upper part
of the beautiful old village which was, like many an English village,
shaped somewhat like a horseshoe--and then suddenly he stopped and gazed
intently into a walled stable-yard of which the big gates were wide open.

Beechfield was Timmy Tosswill's world in little. He was passionately
interested in all that concerned its inhabitants, and was a familiar and
constant, though not always a welcome visitor to every cottage. Most of
the older village men and women had a certain grudging affection for the
odd little boy. They were all well aware of, and believed in, the gift
which made him, as the nurse had once explained to a crony of hers, "see
things which are not there," though not one of them would have cared to
mention it to him.

Timmy had a special reason for wishing to know what was going on in this
stable-yard, so, after a moment's thought, he walked deliberately through
the gates as if he had some business there, and then he saw that two men,
one of whom was a stranger to him, were tidying up the place in a very
leisurely, thoroughgoing man