heed to it, since it gave him no pain and
little more than a passing discomfort. It started, in fact, as a
small hard cyst low down at the back of the right thigh, incommoding
him when he bent his knee. He called it "a nut in the flesh," and
tried once or twice to get rid of it by squeezing it between fingers
and thumb. It did not yield to this treatment.

He could not fix, within a month or so, the date when it began to
hurt him. But it had been hurting him, off and on, for some weeks,
when one night, tacking out towards the fishing-grounds against a
stiffish southerly breeze, as he ran forward to tend the fore-sheet
his leg gave way under him as if it had been stabbed, and he rolled
into the scuppers in intolerable anguish. For a week after this
Nicky-Nan nursed himself ashore, and it was given out that he had
twisted his knee-cap. He did not call in a doctor, although the
swelling took on a red and angry hue. As a fact, no medical man now
resided within three miles of Polpier. (When asked how they did
without one, the inhabitants answered gravely that during the summer
season, when the visitors were about, Dr Mant came over twice a-week
from St Martin's; in the winter they just died a natural death.)

At any rate Nicky-Nan, because he was poor, would not call in a
doctor; and, because he was proud, would not own to anything worse
than a twisted knee, even when his neighbours on the Quay, putting
their heads together, had shaken them collectively and decided that
"the poor man must be suff'rin' from something chronic."

Then followed a bitter time, as his savings dwindled. He made more
than a dozen brave attempts to resume his old occupation. But in the
smallest lop of a sea he was useless, so that it became dangerous to
take him. Month by month he fell further back in arrears of rent.

And now the end seemed to have arrived with Mr Pamphlett's notice of
ejectment. Nicky-Nan, of course, held that Mr Pamphlett had a
personal grudge against him. Mr Pamphlett had nothing of the sort.
In ordinary circumstances, knowing Nicky-Nan to be an honest man, he
would have treated him easily. But he wanted to "develope" Polpier
to his own advantage: and his scheme of development centred on the
old house by the bridge. He desired to pull it down and transfer the
Bank to that eligible site. He had a plan of the proposed new
building, with a fine stucco frontage and edgings of terra-cotta.

Mr Pamphlett saw his w