knives, and touching letters to the coroner
denouncing his enemies by name, and praying piously for forgiveness. After
a time his fierceness gave way to melancholia. He had been married in this
very overcoat, in his first and only frock-coat that was buttoned up
beneath it. He began to recall their courting along this very walk, his
years of penurious saving to get capital, and the bright hopefulness of
his marrying days. For it all to work out like this! Was there no
sympathetic ruler anywhere in the world? He reverted to death as a topic.

He thought of the canal he had just crossed, and doubted whether he
shouldn't stand with his head out, even in the middle, and it was while
drowning was in his mind that the purple pileus caught his eye. He looked
at it mechanically for a moment, and stopped and stooped towards it to
pick it up, under the impression that it was some such small leather
object as a purse. Then he saw that it was the purple top of a fungus, a
peculiarly poisonous-looking purple: slimy, shiny, and emitting a sour
odour. He hesitated with his hand an inch or so from it, and the thought
of poison crossed his mind. With that he picked the thing, and stood up
again with it in his hand.

The odour was certainly strong--acrid, but by no means disgusting. He
broke off a piece, and the fresh surface was a creamy white, that changed
like magic in the space of ten seconds to a yellowish-green colour. It was
even an inviting-looking change. He broke off two other pieces to see it
repeated. They were wonderful things these fungi, thought Mr. Coombes, and
all of them the deadliest poisons, as his father had often told him.
Deadly poisons!

There is no time like the present for a rash resolve. Why not here and
now? thought Mr. Coombes. He tasted a little piece, a very little piece
indeed--a mere crumb. It was so pungent that he almost spat it out again,
then merely hot and full-flavoured: a kind of German mustard with a touch
of horse-radish and--well, mushroom. He swallowed it in the excitement of
the moment. Did he like it or did he not? His mind was curiously careless.
He would try another bit. It really wasn't bad--it was good. He forgot his
troubles in the interest of the immediate moment. Playing with death it
was. He took another bite, and then deliberately finished a mouthful. A
curious, tingling sensation began in his finger-tips and toes. His pulse
began to move faster. The blood in his ears sounded like a