am.

The line of the sea looked frozen in the very vividness of its
violet-blue, like the vein of a frozen finger. For miles and miles,
forward and back, there was no breathing soul, save two pedestrians,
walking at a brisk pace, though one had much longer legs and took much
longer strides than the other.

It did not seem a very appropriate place or time for a holiday, but
Father Brown had few holidays, and had to take them when he could, and
he always preferred, if possible, to take them in company with his old
friend Flambeau, ex-criminal and ex-detective. The priest had had
a fancy for visiting his old parish at Cobhole, and was going
north-eastward along the coast.

After walking a mile or two farther, they found that the shore was
beginning to be formally embanked, so as to form something like a
parade; the ugly lamp-posts became less few and far between and more
ornamental, though quite equally ugly. Half a mile farther on Father
Brown was puzzled first by little labyrinths of flowerless flower-pots,
covered with the low, flat, quiet-coloured plants that look less like
a garden than a tessellated pavement, between weak curly paths studded
with seats with curly backs. He faintly sniffed the atmosphere of a
certain sort of seaside town that he did not specially care about, and,
looking ahead along the parade by the sea, he saw something that put
the matter beyond a doubt. In the grey distance the big bandstand of a
watering-place stood up like a giant mushroom with six legs.

"I suppose," said Father Brown, turning up his coat-collar and drawing
a woollen scarf rather closer round his neck, "that we are approaching a
pleasure resort."

"I fear," answered Flambeau, "a pleasure resort to which few people just
now have the pleasure of resorting. They try to revive these places in
the winter, but it never succeeds except with Brighton and the old ones.
This must be Seawood, I think--Lord Pooley's experiment; he had the
Sicilian Singers down at Christmas, and there's talk about holding one
of the great glove-fights here. But they'll have to chuck the rotten
place into the sea; it's as dreary as a lost railway-carriage."

They had come under the big bandstand, and the priest was looking up at
it with a curiosity that had something rather odd about it, his head
a little on one side, like a bird's. It was the conventional, rather
tawdry kind of erection for its purpose: a flattened dome or canopy,
gilt here and there