lf-way up to
his knees. Then he said, with a clearly modulated and rather mincing
articulation: 'Would it discommode you to contribute elsewhere a coin
with a somewhat different superscription?'

"With one exception there was nothing definably abnormal about him. His
tinted glasses were not really opaque, but of a blue kind common enough,
nor were the eyes behind them shifty, but regarded me steadily. His dark
beard was not really long or wild--, but he looked rather hairy, because
the beard began very high up in his face, just under the cheek-bones.
His complexion was neither sallow nor livid, but on the contrary rather
clear and youthful; yet this gave a pink-and-white wax look which
somehow (I don't know why) rather increased the horror. The only oddity
one could fix was that his nose, which was otherwise of a good shape,
was just slightly turned sideways at the tip; as if, when it was soft,
it had been tapped on one side with a toy hammer. The thing was hardly
a deformity; yet I cannot tell you what a living nightmare it was to
me. As he stood there in the sunset-stained water he affected me as some
hellish sea-monster just risen roaring out of a sea like blood. I don't
know why a touch on the nose should affect my imagination so much. I
think it seemed as if he could move his nose like a finger. And as if he
had just that moment moved it.

"'Any little assistance,' he continued with the same queer, priggish
accent, 'that may obviate the necessity of my communicating with the
family.'

"Then it rushed over me that I was being blackmailed for the theft of
the bronze piece; and all my merely superstitious fears and doubts were
swallowed up in one overpowering, practical question. How could he
have found out? I had stolen the thing suddenly and on impulse; I was
certainly alone; for I always made sure of being unobserved when I
slipped out to see Philip in this way. I had not, to all appearance,
been followed in the street; and if I had, they could not 'X-ray' the
coin in my closed hand. The man standing on the sand-hills could no more
have seen what I gave Philip than shoot a fly in one eye, like the man
in the fairy-tale.

"'Philip,' I cried helplessly, 'ask this man what he wants.'

"When Philip lifted his head at last from mending his net he looked
rather red, as if sulky or ashamed; but it may have been only the
exertion of stooping and the red evening light; I may have only had
another of the morbid fancies