"Stephen doesn't mind I'm sure," replied Sidney with a smile, and Stephen assured him that he was welcome. While the others were talking and admiring the place Dr. Jim stood looking at the boy who was leaning back on the sofa taken up with his own thoughts. There was something peculiar about Sidney Endicotte, which procured him the name of the Changeling. This was given to him in fun by Bess; but many people in the village really believed that he was half a fairy if not a whole one. This reputation rose from the fact that the lad possessed that gift which in Scotland is called the second sight. No one in Saxham who saw Master Sidney's large blue eyes fixed upon him or her but turned pale. In Italy he would have been credited with the Evil eye, and indeed old Petronella always crossed herself when she chanced to meet him. Once or twice Sidney had foretold the death of those who had afterwards died. Thus he had an uncanny reputation. He was a small thin boy looking much older than his years. Although he was but sixteen, yet on occasions he looked quite twenty. Pale, thin-faced, with large blue eyes, and a curious insistent gaze, he sometimes made even his own family feel uncomfortable. Then he had such peculiar habits. At night he was generally wakeful, and he slept much in the day-time particularly in cold weather. Sometimes he would slip out of his bedroom by the window and remain away for hours. When questioned where he had been he used vaguely to answer "In the wood." The doctors who had seen him could make nothing of him. He was healthy in his own way, his head was clear, and Corn reported that he learned rapidly. But about him hung a glamour not of this world. He might have been a male Kilmeny who had returned from fairy-land. Bess sometimes called him Thomas the Rhymer. When she did so Sidney would nod and laugh in so strange a way, that Bess herself grew frightened, and dropped the name. "How do you feel to-day Sidney?" asked Jim sitting down beside the boy. "Not very well," he replied vaguely. "I feel that I am not myself. I came here to read myself to sleep." "Why did you want to do that?" "Because I could go away then. I always do when I feel like this." "Like what?" Jim was puzzled. The boy was by no means mad, yet he talked in a manner quite beyond the comprehension of a sane person. Jim had never met anyone like him before and was much taken up with the oddity of the case from a medical point of view. "I can't explain; you would not understand," said Sidney. "Please leave me alone, Dr. Herrick." At this moment Bess called to Jim from the other side of the room and he hurried across to her. Sidney remained vaguely staring into nothingness. After a time his eyes closed and he looked as though he were fast asleep. The others gathered round the tea table, and prepared to eat. Bess would not allow her brother to be awakened. "It makes him ill if he is roused suddenly," she said. "He will wake up himself and be all right."