And then just as she reached the level, very sharply she stopped. It was as if a hand had caught her back. For suddenly there rose up before her a figure so strange that for a moment she felt almost like a scared child. It sprang from the bushes and stood facing her like an animal at bay--a short creature neither man nor boy, misshapen, grotesquely humped, possessing long thin arms of almost baboon-like proportions. The head was sunken into the shoulders. It was flung back and the face upraised--and it was the face that made her pause, for it was the most pathetic sight she had ever looked upon. It was the face of a lad of two or three and twenty, but drawn in lines so painful, so hollowed, so piteous, that fear melted into compassion at the sight. The dark eyes that stared upwards had a frightened look mingled with a certain defiance. He stood barefooted on the edge of the cliff, clenching and unclenching his bony hands, with the air of a culprit awaiting sentence. There was a decided pause before his victim spoke. She found some difficulty in grappling with the situation, but she had no intention of turning her back upon it. She felt it must be tackled with resolution. After a moment she spoke, with as much sternness as she could muster, "Why did you throw those stones?" He backed at the sound of her voice, and she had an instant of sickening fear, for there was a drop of twenty feet behind him on the shingle. But he must have seen her look, for he stopped himself on the brink, and stood there doggedly. "Don't stand there!" she said quickly. "I'm not going to hurt you." He lowered his head, and looked at her from under drawn brows. "Yes, you are," he said gruffly. "You're going to beat me with that stick." The shrewdness of this surmise struck her as not without humour. She smiled, and, turning, flung the stick straight down to the path below. "Now!" she said. He came forward, not very willingly, and stood within a couple of yards of her, still looking as if he expected some sort of chastisement. She faced him, and the last of her fear departed. Though he was so terribly deformed that he looked like some dreadful beast reared on its hind legs there was that about the face, sullen though it was, that stirred her deepest feelings. She did her best to conceal the fact, however. "Tell me why you threw those stones!" she said. "Because I wanted to hit you," he returned with disconcerting promptitude. She looked at him steadily. "How very unkind of you!" she said. His eyes gleamed with a smouldering resentment. "No, it wasn't. I didn't want you there. Dicky is coming soon, and he likes it best when there is no one there." She noticed that though there was scant courtesy in his speech, it was by no means the rough talk of the fisher-folk. It fired her curiosity. "And who is Dicky?" she said. "Who are you?" he retorted rudely.