nto his face
by an unseen hand. By his side he was conscious of the presence of
a thick-set man in a fisherman's costume of brown oilskins and a
southwester pulled down as though to hide his features, obviously the
man who had dealt him the blow. Then he heard a very soft, quiet voice
behind him.

"He will do now. Come."

The man by his side grunted.

"I am going to make sure of him," he said thickly. Again he heard that
clear voice from behind, this time a little raised. The words failed
to reach his brain, but the tone was one of cold and angry dissent,
followed by an imperative order. Then once more his senses seemed to be
leaving him. He passed into the world which seemed to consist only of
himself and a youth in fisherman's oilskins, who was sometimes Furley,
sometimes his own sister, sometimes the figure of a person who for the
last twenty-four hours had been continually in his thoughts, who seemed
at one moment to be sympathising with him and at another to be playing
upon his face with a garden hose. Then it all faded away, and a sort of
numbness crept over him. He made a desperate struggle for consciousness.
There was something cold resting against his cheek. His fingers stole
towards it. It was the flask, drawn from his own pocket and placed there
by some unseen hand, the top already unscrewed, and the reviving odour
stealing into his nostrils. He guided it to his lips with trembling
fingers. A pleasant sense of warmth crept over him. His head fell back.

When he opened his eyes again, he first turned around for the tea by his
bedside, then stared in front of him, wondering if these things which
he saw were indeed displayed through an upraised blind. There was
the marsh--a picture of still life--winding belts of sea creeping,
serpent-like, away from him towards the land, with broad pools, in whose
bosom, here and there, were flashes of a feeble sunlight. There were
the clumps of wild lavender he had so often admired, the patches of deep
meadow green, and, beating the air with their wings as they passed, came
a flight of duck over his head. Very stiff and dazed, he staggered to
his feet. There was the village to his right, red-tiled, familiar; the
snug farmhouses, with their brown fields and belts of trees; the curve
of the white road.

And then, with a single flash of memory, it all came back to him. He
felt the top of his head, still sore; looked down at the stretch of
shingle, empty now of any reminisce