like ..." she
paused, "anythink like 'im?" and she indicated the cradle in the
sitting-room.

"What's 'e want, 'angin' round 'ere?" replied Stott, disregarding the
comparison. "'Ere, get off," he called, and he went into the garden and
picked up a stick.

The idiot shambled away.

CHAPTER VI

HIS FATHER'S DESERTION

I

The strongest of all habits is that of acquiescence. It is this habit of
submission that explains the admired patience and long-suffering of the
abjectly poor. The lower the individual falls, the more unconquerable
becomes the inertia of mind which interferes between him and revolt
against his condition. All the miseries of the flesh, even starvation,
seem preferable to the making of an effort great enough to break this
habit of submission.

Ginger Stott was not poor. For a man in his station of life he was
unusually well provided for, but in him the habit of acquiescence was
strongly rooted. Before his son was a year old, Stott had grown to
loathe his home, to dread his return to it, yet it did not occur to him
until another year had passed that he could, if he would, set up another
establishment on his own account; that he could, for instance, take a
room in Ailesworth, and leave his wife and child in the cottage. For two
years he did not begin to think of this idea, and then it was suddenly
forced upon him.

Ever since they had overheard those strangely intelligent
self-communings, the Stotts had been perfectly aware that their
wonderful child could talk if he would. Ellen Mary, pondering that
single expression, had read a world of meaning into her son's murmurs of
"learning." In her simple mind she understood that his deliberate
withholding of speech was a reserve against some strange manifestation.

The manifestation, when it came, was as remarkable as it was unexpected.

The armchair in which Henry Challis had once sat was a valued
possession, dedicated by custom to the sole use of George Stott. Ever
since he had been married, Stott had enjoyed the full and undisputed use
of that chair. Except at his meals, he never sat in any other, and he
had formed a fixed habit of throwing himself into that chair immediately
on his return from his work at the County Ground.

One evening in November, however, when his son was just over two years
old, Stott found his sacred chair occupied. He hesitated a moment, and
then went in to the kitchen to find his wife.

"That child's in my chair,