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261 AN ODD LIFE. 261

golden locks back from his feverish baby-brow, as if to assure myself by touching him that he was not a phantom.

" Ah, well ! " he finished, " it doesn't matter. I have had my day, and mustn't grumble. I scarcely thought, when I witnessed the dissolution of the third Gladstone Government, that I should have lived to see him Premier a fourth time. Three doctors told me I was breaking up fast."

I began to be frightened of this extraordinary infant, divining some wizardry behind the candid little face — some latter-day mystery of re-incarnation, esoteric Buddhism, what-not. The child perceived my perturbation.

"You are thinking I have packed a good deal into my short life," he said, with an amused smile. "And yet some men will make a Gladstone bag hold as much as a port- manteau. Gladstone has done so ; and why not I, in my humble degree? "

"True," I answered; "but you cannot begin to pack before you are born."

"You are entirely mistaken," replied the baby, "if you think I have done anything so precocious as that."

"Then you must have lived an odd life," I said, puzzled.

" You have hit it ! " exclaimed the child, with a suspicion of eagerness, not unmingled with surprise. " I did not mean to tell anyone ; but since you are a man of science and I am on the point of death, you may as well know you have guessed the truth."

"Have I?" I said, more bewildered than ever.

"Yes. In all these years no one has suspected it. It has been carefully kept from outsiders. But now it would, perhaps, be childish folly to be reticent about it. It is the truth — the plain, literal truth — I have lived an odd life."

"How did it begin?" I asked, scarce knowing what I said or what I meant.