, my dear?"

"I want to tell you something."

"Yes, Timmy?"

"It's I who ought to be shot, not Josephine. It was all my fault. It had
nothing to do with her."

"I don't know what you mean, Timmy. You mustn't talk in that exaggerated
way. Of course it was foolish of you to bring the cat into the
drawing-room, but still, you couldn't possibly have known that she would
fly at Mrs. Crofton, or you wouldn't have done it."

"I _did_ think she'd fly at Mrs. Crofton," he whispered.

Janet felt disagreeably startled. "What d'you mean, Timmy? D'you mean
that you saw the cat fly at her before it happened?"

She had known the boy to have such strange, vivid premonitions of events
which had come to pass.

But Timmy answered slowly: "No, I don't mean that. I mean, Mum, that I
wanted to try an experiment. I wanted to see if Josephine would see what
Flick saw--I mean if she'd see the ghost of Colonel Crofton's dog. She
did, for the dog was close to Mrs. Crofton's arm--the arm hanging over
the side of the sofa, you know."

"Oh, Timmy! How very, very wrong of you to do such a thing!"

"I know it was wrong." Timmy twisted himself about. "But it's no good you
saying that to me now--it only makes me more miserable."

"But I _have_ to say so, my boy." Janet was not a Scotch mother for
nothing. "I have to say so, Timmy, and I shall not be sorry this
happened, if it makes you behave in a different way--as I hope it
will--the whole of your life long."

"It won't--I won't let it--if anything is done to Josephine!"

But she went on, a little desperately, yet speaking in a quiet, collected
way: "I believe the things you say, Timmy. I believe you do see things
which other people are not allowed to see. But that ought to make you
far, far more careful--not less careful. Try to be an instrument for
good, not for evil, my dear, dear child."

Timmy did not answer at once, but at last he said in a queer, muffled
voice: "If I were to tell Dr. O'Farrell what I did, do you think it would
make any difference? Do you think that he'd let Josephine go on being
alive?"

"No," his mother answered, sadly, "I don't think it would make any
difference."

"I thought by what the doctor said at first that they were going to take
Josephine somewhere to see if she was really mad," said Timmy in a
choking voice, "just as they did to Captain Berner's dog last year."

Janet Tosswill got up from her little boy's bed. She lit a candle. Poor
Timmy! She ha