Challis came forward to meet him with a conventional greeting. "I'm glad you were able to come ..." he began, but the child took no notice; he looked rapidly round the room, and not finding what he wanted, signified his desire by a single word. "Books," he said, and looked at Challis. Heathcote stood at the door, hesitating between amazement and disapproval. "I've never seen the like," was how he phrased his astonishment later, in the servants' hall, "never in all my born days. To see that melon-'eaded himp in a cricket-cap hordering the master about. Well, there----" "Jessop says he fair got the creeps drivin' 'im over," said the cook. "'E says the child's not right in 'is 'ead." Much embroidery followed in the servants' hall. INTERLUDE This brief history of the Hampdenshire Wonder is marked by a stereotyped division into three parts, an arbitrary arrangement dependent on the experience of the writer. The true division becomes manifest at this point. The life of Victor Stott was cut into two distinct sections, between which there is no correlation. The first part should tell the story of his mind during the life of experience, the time occupied in observation of the phenomena of life presented to him in fact, without any specific teaching on the theories of existence and progress, or on the speculation as to ultimate destiny. The second part should deal with his entry into the world of books; into that account of a long series of collated experiments and partly verified hypotheses we call science; into the imperfectly developed system of inductive and deductive logic which determines mathematics and philosophy; into the long, inaccurate and largely unverifiable account of human blindness and error known as history; and into the realm of idealism, symbol, and pitiful pride we find in the story of poetry, letters, and religion. I will confess that I once contemplated the writing of such a history. It was Challis who, in his courtly, gentle way, pointed out to me that no man living had the intellectual capacity to undertake so profound a work. For some three months before I had this conversation with Challis, I had been wrapped in solitude, dreaming, speculating. I had been uplifted in thought, I had come to believe myself inspired as a result of my separation from the world of men, and of the deep introspection and meditation in which I had been plunged. I had arrived at a point, perhaps not far removed from madness, at which I thought myself capable of setting out the true history of Victor Stott. Challis broke the spell. He cleared away the false glamour which was blinding and intoxicating me, and brought me back to a condition of open-eyed sanity. To Challis I owe a great debt. Yet at the moment I was sunk in depression. All the glory of my vision had faded; the afterglow was quenched in the blackness of the night that drew out of the east and fell from the zenith as a curtain of utter darkness.