Here the beautiful child faltered and broke into bitter sobs.

Professor Einstein and I exchanged glances. The same thing was in both our minds. With a gentle hand the great scientist reached out towards the golden curls, and removed what was all too plainly a wig. The head beneath had been snatched bald. Little Lord Fauntleroy, at the hands of the unspeakable Gold-Tooth Flanagan, had suffered the fate of Samson.

“Have you tried rubbing it with white of egg?” the great man asked.

“Or perhaps a top-dressing of organic fertilizer?” said I.

“It will take months to grow to its full length,” said Fauntleroy, “and we have no time. Unless the horrible plan for a Children’s Bill of Rights (with which Gold-Tooth Flanagan is at this very moment interpenetrating the brain cells of the Assembly at U.N.) is thwarted, society as we have known it must collapse. Children will rule! Can you imagine what that will lead to—?”

“I am not sure that children would do worse with the world than their elders have done,” said Professor Einstein.

“That would depend on what children,” said I. “Take the advice of a man steeped in literature and legend; this is War in Heaven, and instead of a defeat in which Gold-Tooth Flanagan is cast down into the Pit, to howl in torment with all his evil followers, he has achieved dominance.”

“Indeed he has,” said Fauntleroy. “He’s strutting around the Children’s Paradise flashing his gold tooth and wearing my hair!”

“I see that you are right,” said Professor Einstein. “Like many childless people, I tend to have an extravagantly high opinion of children.”

“You must re-read King Lear,” said I.

“I shall do so,” said he; “but meanwhile, my child, do not lose heart. I shall go to the United Nations Assembly, where I still have some spiritual influence, and do what I can.”

The face of Little Lord Fauntleroy was suffused with a flush of rapture. He rushed to the great man and covered his face with kisses, while Dougal licked Einstein’s violin with his huge tongue, making it disagreeably wet.

“Meanwhile, to be on the safe side, you might try this,” said I, taking a small black bottle from beneath the top of the piano.

“You dear old souls,” said the Wondrous Child, his eyes filling with tears, “shall I really regain my hair?”

“That isn’t hair tonic,” said I; “that is a substance I use for cleaning my piano keys. It is drastic if taken internally; for instance, by anyone who was using it to clean a gold tooth.”

If I am not mistaken, the child winked at me. “Oh what a lovely practical joke that would be,” he said. “Of course Gold-Tooth is beyond Death, but he is certainly not beyond humiliation.” Then, seizing Dougal by the collar Lord Fauntleroy and the great dog ran toward the door. Before they reached it, they had grown dim, and vanished.

“Do you really think that children may take over the world?” I said to Professor Einstein.

“I cannot believe it,” said the great physicist. “Have I not said that God does not play at dice with the fate of the Universe?”

Once again he raised his bow, and off we went into Bach. But because of Dougal’s energetic licking his violin was sadly out of tune. The sound grew fainter, and I was aware of a decline in my own musical abilities until I found myself playing alone, and playing badly, and I knew that the seventeenth ghostly visitation to Massey College had reached its end.

Many of you who are here tonight have heard several of the Massey College Ghost stories, and there are some who have heard them all. Seventeen stories up to the present, and all of them true. Yet I have never felt justified in taking the ghosts for granted; I have never dared to think—Oh, one pops up every year, and it’s sure to appear on time. Ghosts do not like to be taken for granted, just as they do not like to be given orders. You will understand why I was uneasy; this is my last year as Master of Massey College, and I should have liked to round out my time here by telling you of yet another ghost. However, “ ‘Tis not in mortals to command success”. I have no ghost for you.

However, there was something—circumstances of which I ought to inform you, though when you have heard them you will understand my reluctance in making them known. Not a ghost—no—but something not quite in the common run of affairs. Oh, that I had the resolution to stop now, to say no more! But—here it is.

It happened at the end of November, when we held our last High Table for this year. We don’t have High Tables in December because the College Dance and this affair are our offerings of hospitality during the Christmas season. Hospitality! It is one of the guiding lights of this College. Every honour, every consideration for our guests—that is our somewhat old-fashioned principle. A guest here is sacred.

On the Friday afternoon, when we were getting ready for High Table, Miss Whalon received a telephone call from Dr. Walter Zingg, the distinguished medical scientist and a Senior Fellow. “I hope it won’t upset the arrangement of the table too much,” said he, “but I should greatly like to bring a visitor who has arrived unexpectedly from South America—a scientist of international renown, from Bogota, a Professor J. M. Murphy.” That was easily arranged, and when the list of guests was being prepared Miss Whalon discovered that the University from which Professor Murphy came was founded in 1572 (which makes it substantially our senior) and that it must also be one of the most exalted universities in the world, for it stands 9,000 feet above sea level. But when she finally ran the professor down in an academic directory it said only that he was a world leader in Cryonics, and that his full name was Jesus Maria Murphy.

This did not trouble me. South America is full of the descendants of Irish immigrants who retain their Irish names, although they are now almost wholly of Spanish and Indian blood. Jesus Maria Murphy would cause no more raised eyebrows in Colombia than such a name as Mackenzie King Stacey might in Canada. I didn’t know what Cryonics was, but I didn’t need to know; Professor Zingg would take care of all that.

I was not prepared, however, for the figure who appeared in the Senior Common Room under the wing of Dr. Zingg. I say “under the wing” advisedly, for Professor Murphy came no higher than the doctor’s waist. He was the tiniest human being that I have ever seen, but that was not the only thing that gave him an air of unreality; his complexion was so rich in colour, and his hair was so glossily black that he looked like a beautifully-made doll. Hair dye and an almost operatic amount of makeup; strange in an academic, but these are permissive times. When I took his hand, it was like a tiny claw, and extraordinarily cold—so cold I almost dropped it in surprise.

When I am disconcerted I take refuge in extreme heartiness and good-fellowship, which, as most of you know, is no indication of my true nature. That is what I did when I felt that cold, cold hand.

“Welcome, Professor Murphy!” I roared; “What good fortune for us that you are able to dine here to-night! Ho, ho, ho!”

He responded with what I suppose he meant for a reciprocal exuberance. In a thin, high voice, very much like Punch in the puppet-shows I used to see in London, he replied: “Dat what you tink, eh? Locky for you? Yes, lockier dan you know! He, he, he!”

I introduced Professor Murphy to some of the others who had assembled for dinner. Quite without self-consciousness he skipped up on top of the table, and stood there, so as to be able to address them face to face.

When an opportunity came, I looked enquiringly at Professor Zingg; he was blushing. “Never saw him before,” he said, “but I have to take care of him over the weekend—keeping off big dogs and mean children and that sort of thing.”