eone who lived in the next street. But a glance at his face
convinced her that he meant exactly what he said.

"Austin!" she exclaimed. "What can you be thinking about?"

"It's perfectly true," he assured her. "I saw her a few weeks ago in
the garden. She stood and looked at me over the gate, and then
suddenly disappeared."

"And you really believe it?" cried Aunt Charlotte in amaze.

"I don't believe it, I know it," he answered, laying down the
photograph. "I saw her as distinctly as I see you now. It was that day
we had been having tea at the vicarage, when we met the man who wanted
to set fire to some bishop or other. Ask Lubin; he'll remember it fast
enough."

This time Aunt Charlotte fairly collapsed. It was no longer any use
flouting Austin's statements; they were too calm, too collected, to be
disposed of by mere derision. There could be no doubt that he firmly
believed he had seen something or somebody, and whatever might be the
explanation of that belief it had enabled him not only to recognise
his mother's photograph but to criticise, and criticise correctly, a
certain defect in the portrait. She could not deny that what he said
was true. "Can such things really be?" she uttered under her breath.

"Dear auntie, they _are_," said Austin. "I've been conscious of it for
months, and lately I've had the proof. Indeed, I've had more than
one. There are people all round us, only it isn't given to everybody
to see them. And it isn't really very astonishing that it should be
so, when one comes to think of it."

From that day forward Aunt Charlotte watched Austin with a sense of
something akin to awe. Certainly he was different from other folk.
With all his love of life, his keen interest in his surroundings, and
his wealth of boyish spirits, he seemed a being apart--a being who
lived not only in this world but on the boundary between this world
and another. As an orthodox Christian woman of course she believed in
that other--"another and a better world," as she was accustomed to
call it. But that that world was actually around her, hemming her in,
within reach of her fingertips so to speak, that was quite a new idea.
It gave her the creeps, and she strove to put it out of her head as
much as possible. But ere many weeks elapsed, it was forced upon her
in a very painful way, and she could no longer ignore the feeling
which stole over her from time to time that not only was the boundary
between the two worlds a v