uld enjoy another ten minutes of her delicious sun-bath ere she
returned for the midday meal that Mrs. Rickett was preparing in the
little thatched cottage next to the forge.

Again she stretched herself luxuriously. Yes, it was better than London;
the soft splashing of waves was better than the laughter of a hundred
voices, better than the roar of a thousand wheels, better than the voice
of a million concerts ... Again reverie merged into drowsy absence of
thought. How exquisite the sunshine was!...

It fell upon her dark cheek this time with a sharp sting and bounced
off on to her hand--a round black stone dropped from nowhere but with
strangely accurate aim. She sprang up abruptly. This was getting
beyond a joke.

Columbus was still rooting beneath the distant bush. Most certainly he
was not the offender. Some boy was hiding somewhere among the humps and
clefts that constituted the rough surface of the cliff. She picked up her
walking-stick with a certain tightening of the lips. She would teach that
boy a lesson if she caught him unawares.

Grimly she set her face to the cliff and to the narrow, winding passage
by which she had descended to the shore. Her dreams were wholly
scattered! Her cheek still smarted from the blow. She left the sea
without a backward glance. She sent forth a shrill whistle to Columbus as
she began to climb the slippery path of stones. She was convinced that
it was from this that her assailant had gathered his weapons.

With springing steps she mounted, looking sharply to right and left as
she did so! And in a moment, turning inwards from the sea, she caught
sight of a movement among some straggling bushes a few yards to one side
of the path.

Without an instant's hesitation she swung herself up the steep
incline, climbing with a rapidity that swiftly cut off the landward
line of retreat. She would give her assailant a fright for his pains
if nothing better.

And then just as she reached the level, very sharply she stopped. It was
as if a hand had caught her back. For suddenly there rose up before her a
figure so strange that for a moment she felt almost like a scared child.
It sprang from the bushes and stood facing her like an animal at bay--a
short creature neither man nor boy, misshapen, grotesquely humped,
possessing long thin arms of almost baboon-like proportions. The head
was sunken into the shoulders. It was flung back and the face
upraised--and it was the face that made her p