Clothed, clean, and
groomed, the boy lost none of his uncanniness in Van Cheele's eyes,
but his aunt found him sweet.
"We must call him something till we know who he really is," she
said. "Gabriel-Ernest, I think; those are nice suitable names."
Van Cheele agreed, but he privately doubted whether they were being
grafted on to a nice suitable child. His misgivings were not
diminished by the fact that his staid and elderly spaniel had bolted
out of the house at the first incoming of the boy, and now
obstinately remained shivering and yapping at the farther end of the
orchard, while the canary, usually as vocally industrious as Van
Cheele himself, had put itself on an allowance of frightened cheeps.
More than ever he was resolved to consult Cunningham without loss of
time.
As he drove off to the station his aunt was arranging that Gabriel-
Ernest should help her to entertain the infant members of her
Sunday-school class at tea that afternoon.
Cunningham was not at first disposed to be communicative.
"My mother died of some brain trouble," he explained, "so you will
understand why I am averse to dwelling on anything of an impossibly
fantastic nature that I may see or think that I have seen."
"But what DID you see?" persisted Van Cheele.
"What I thought I saw was something so extraordinary that no really
sane man could dignify it with the credit of having actually
happened. I was standing, the last evening I was with you, half-
hidden in the hedgegrowth by the orchard gate, watching the dying
glow of the sunset.
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