ut and flung it forth as a fly-fisher flings his line.

My instant thought was that Gip mustn't see him. I turned about, and
there was Gip quite preoccupied with the shopman, and thinking no evil.
They were whispering together and looking at me. Gip was standing on
a little stool, and the shopman was holding a sort of big drum in his
hand.

"Hide and seek, dadda!" cried Gip. "You're He!"

And before I could do anything to prevent it, the shopman had clapped
the big drum over him. I saw what was up directly. "Take that off," I
cried, "this instant! You'll frighten the boy. Take it off!"

The shopman with the unequal ears did so without a word, and held the
big cylinder towards me to show its emptiness. And the little stool was
vacant! In that instant my boy had utterly disappeared?...

You know, perhaps, that sinister something that comes like a hand out
of the unseen and grips your heart about. You know it takes your common
self away and leaves you tense and deliberate, neither slow nor hasty,
neither angry nor afraid. So it was with me.

I came up to this grinning shopman and kicked his stool aside.

"Stop this folly!" I said. "Where is my boy?"

"You see," he said, still displaying the drum's interior, "there is no
deception---"

I put out my hand to grip him, and he eluded me by a dexterous movement.
I snatched again, and he turned from me and pushed open a door to
escape. "Stop!" I said, and he laughed, receding. I leapt after
him--into utter darkness.

THUD!

"Lor' bless my 'eart! I didn't see you coming, sir!"

I was in Regent Street, and I had collided with a decent-looking working
man; and a yard away, perhaps, and looking a little perplexed with
himself, was Gip. There was some sort of apology, and then Gip had
turned and come to me with a bright little smile, as though for a moment
he had missed me.

And he was carrying four parcels in his arm!

He secured immediate possession of my finger.

For the second I was rather at a loss. I stared round to see the door
of the magic shop, and, behold, it was not there! There was no door, no
shop, nothing, only the common pilaster between the shop where they sell
pictures and the window with the chicks!...

I did the only thing possible in that mental tumult; I walked straight
to the kerbstone and held up my umbrella for a cab.

"'Ansoms," said Gip, in a note of culminating exultation.

I helped him in, recalled my address with an effort, and got in