Maisie could never be quite sure when she first met up with Hamilton; most likely it was when she started talking to herself as an often lonely seven-year-old. But she didn't call him that then. Oh no, that came much later when she was fourteen and Doctor Kane had to pay her a professional visit. "Let us use our horse sence," he said, and at that precise moment what did Maisie see but a great horse galloping right over him and all the time looking at her; its eyes full of knowledge and its lips drawn back as if in laughter. It had a long white tail and flowing mane, a white spot on its nose, and its body was shining black and sleek as a seal's! When Maisie saw the name of Hamilton on a horse box, she adopted it for her new and secret companion.

A secret he had to remain for many years, for what ideas might people get about the mental state of a girl who had conjured up an imaginary horse that only she could see and hear to act as her guide, philosopher and friend? life was difficult enough without that, and increasingly so as Maisie grew to womanhood and became a wife.

But if she could not talk to anyone about Hamilton she could at last write about him. And write she did, with results that would eventually broaden her horizons far beyond the confines of her native Tyneside.