on mine.

"Lordy me! whereabouts, sir?" she inquired.

I pointed with a trembling forefinger. She stood by my side on the
threshold of the cottage and shaded her eyes with her hand, for the
glare of the sun was dazzling.

"Well, I never did!" she remarked. "But I said to John last night that
I pitied them at sea. He's been washed up by the tide, I suppose, and I
count there'll be more before the day's out. A year come next September
there was six of 'em, gentlefolk, too, who'd been yachting. Eh, but
it's a cruel thing is the sea."

"Where is your husband?" I asked.

"Up chopping wood in Fernham Spinney," she answered. "I'd best send one
of the children for him. He'll have a cart with him. Will you step
inside, sir?"

I shook my head and answered her vaguely. She sent a boy with a
message, and brought me out a chair, dusting it carefully with her
apron.

"You'd best sit down, sir. You look all struck of a heap, so to speak.
Maybe you came upon it sudden."

I was glad enough to sit down, but I answered her at random. She
re-entered the cottage and continued some household duties. I sat quite
still, with my eyes steadily fixed upon a dark object a little to the
left of those white palings. Above my head a starling in a wicker cage
was making an insane cackling, on the green patch in front a couple of
tame rabbits sat and watched me, pink-eyed, imperturbable. Inside I
could hear the slow ticking of an eight-day clock. The woman was
humming to herself as she worked. All these things, which my senses
took quick note of and retained, seemed to me to belong to another
world. I myself was under some sort of spell. My brain was numb with
terror, the fire of life had left my veins, so that I sat there in the
warm sunshine and shivered until my teeth chattered. Inside, the woman
was singing over her work.

And then the spell developed. A nameless but loathsome fascination drew
me from my seat, drew me with uneven and reluctant footsteps out of the
gate and down the narrow straight road. There was still not a soul in
sight. I drew nearer and nearer to the spot. Once more I essayed to
move him. It was utterly in vain. Such nerve as I possessed had left
me wholly and altogether. A sense of repulsion, nauseating, invincible,
made a child of me. I stood up and looked around wildly. It was then
for the first time I saw what my right foot had trodden into the sand.

I picked it up, and a little cry, unheard save by the sea-bi