He had never seen so young an infant before, and, just for one moment, he believed that it was a normal child. "What an 'ead!" was his first ejaculation, and then he realised the significance of that sign. Fear came into his eyes, and his mouth fell open. "'Ere, I say, nurse, it's ... it's a wrong 'un, ain't it?" he gasped. "I'm sure I can't tell you, Mr. Stott," broke out the nurse hysterically. She had been feeding and tending that curious baby for three hours, and she was on the verge of a break-down. There was no wet-nurse to be had, but a woman from the village had been sent for. She was expected every moment. "More like a tadpole than anything," mused the unhappy father. "Oh! Mr. Stott, for goodness' sake, don't," cried the nurse. "If you only knew...." "Knew what?" questioned Stott, still staring at the motionless figure of his son, who lay with closed eyes, apparently unconscious. "There's something--I don't know," began the nurse, and then after a pause, during which she seemed to struggle for some means of expression, she continued with a sigh of utter weariness, "You'll know when it opens its eyes. Oh! Why doesn't that woman come, the woman you sent for?" "She'll be 'ere directly," replied Stott. "What d'you mean about there bein' something ... something what?" "Uncanny," said the nurse without conviction. "I do wish that woman would come. I've been up the best part of the night, and now...." "Uncanny? As how?" persisted Stott. "Not normal," explained the nurse. "I can't tell you more than that." "But 'ow? What way?" He did not receive an answer then; for the long expected relief came at last, a great hulk of a woman, who became voluble when she saw the child she had come to nurse. "Oh! dear, oh! dear," the stream began. "How unforchnit, and 'er first, too. It'll be a idjit, I'm afraid. Mrs. 'Arrison's third was the very spit of it...." The stream ran on, but Stott heard no more. An idiot! He had fathered an idiot! That was the end of his dreams and ambitions! He had had an hour's sleep on the sitting-room sofa. He went out to his work at the County Ground with a heart full of blasphemy. When he returned at four o'clock he met the stout woman on the doorstep. She put up a hand to her rolling breast, closed her eyes tightly, and gasped as though completely overcome by this trifling rencounter. "'Ow is it?" questioned the obsessed Stott. "Oh dear! Oh dear!" panted the stout woman, "the leas' thing upsets me this afternoon...." She wandered away into irrelevant fluency, but Stott was autocratic; his insistent questions overcame the inertia of even Mrs. Reade at last. The substance of her information, freed from extraneous matter, was as follows: