ott had once before expounded his philosophy and Challis, on
that occasion, had deliberately refused to listen. And we may guess that
Grossmann, also, might have received some great illumination, had he
chosen to pay deference to a mind so infinitely greater than his own.

CHAPTER XIII

FUGITIVE

Meanwhile a child of five--all unconscious that his quiet refusal to
participate in the making and breaking of reputations was temporarily a
matter of considerable annoyance to a Fellow of the Royal Society--ran
through a well-kept index of the books in the library of Challis
Court--an index written clearly on cards that occupied a great nest of
accessible drawers; two cards with a full description to each book,
alphabetically arranged, one card under the title of the work and one
under the author's name.

The child made no notes as he studied--he never wrote a single line in
all his life; but when a drawer of that delightful index had been
searched, he would walk here and there among the three rooms at his
disposal, and by the aid of the flight of framed steps that ran smoothly
on rubber-tyred wheels, he would take down now and again some book or
another until, returning to the table at last to read, he sat in an
enceinte of piled volumes that had been collected round him.

Sometimes he read a book from beginning to end, more often he glanced
through it, turning a dozen pages at a time, and then pushed it on one
side with a gesture displaying the contempt that was not shown by any
change of expression.

On many afternoons the sombrely clad figure of a tall, gaunt woman would
stand at the open casement of a window in the larger room, and keep a
mystic vigil that sometimes lasted for hours. She kept her gaze fixed on
that strange little figure whenever it roved up and down the suite of
rooms or clambered the pyramid of brown steps that might have made such
a glorious plaything for any other child. And even when her son was
hidden behind the wall of volumes he had built, the woman would still
stare in his direction, but then her eyes seemed to look inwards; at
such times she appeared to be wrapped in an introspective devotion.

Very rarely, the heavy-shouldered figure of a man would come to the
doorway of the larger room, and also keep a silent vigil--a man who
would stand for some minutes with thoughtful eyes and bent brows and
then sigh, shake his head and move away, gently closing the door behind
him.

There