nder. In his little mind he believed that his early
reading had enabled him to understand all the weaknesses of the
scientific position. His name was Percy Crashaw.

Mrs. Stott could not deny her rector the right of entry, and he insisted
on seeing the infant, who was not yet baptised--a shameful neglect,
according to Crashaw, for the child was nearly six weeks old. Nor had
Mrs. Stott been "churched." Crashaw had good excuse for pressing his
call.

Mrs. Stott refused to face the village. She knew that the place was all
agape, eager to stare at what they considered some "new kind of idiot."
Let them wait, was Ellen Mary's attitude. Her pride was a later
development. In those early weeks she feared criticism.

But she granted Crashaw's request to see the child, and after the
interview (the term is precise) the rector gave way on the question of a
private ceremony, though he had indignantly opposed the scheme when it
was first mooted. It may be that he conceived an image of himself with
that child in his arms, the cynosure of a packed congregation....

Crashaw was one of the influences that hastened the Stotts' departure
from Stoke. He was so indiscreet. After the christening he would talk.
His attitude is quite comprehensible. He, the lawgiver of Stoke, had
been thwarted. He had to find apology for the private baptism he had
denied to many a sickly infant. Moreover, the Stotts had broken another
of his ordinances, for father and mother had stood as godparents to
their own child, and Crashaw himself had been the second godfather
ordained as necessary by the rubric. He had given way on these important
points so weakly; he had to find excuse, and he talked himself into a
false belief with regard to the child he had baptised.

He began with his wife. "I would allow more latitude to medical men," he
said. "In such a case as this child of the Stotts, for instance; it
becomes a burden on the community, I might say a danger, yes, a positive
danger. I am not sure whether I was right in administering the holy
sacrament of baptism...."

"Oh! Percy! Surely ..." began Mrs. Crashaw.

"One moment, my dear," protested the rector, "I have not fully explained
the circumstances of the case." And as he warmed to his theme the image
of Victor Stott grew to a fearful grotesqueness. It loomed as a threat
over the community and the church. Crashaw quoted, inaccurately,
statistics of the growth of lunacy, and then went off at a tangent int