Grimly she set her face to the cliff and to the narrow, winding passage by which she had descended to the shore.  Her dreams were wholly scattered!  Her cheek still smarted from the blow.  She left the sea without a backward glance.  She sent forth a shrill whistle to Columbus as she began to climb the slippery path of stones.  She was convinced that it was from this that her assailant had gathered his weapons.

With springing steps she mounted, looking sharply to right and left as she did so!  And in a moment, turning inwards from the sea, she caught sight of a movement among some straggling bushes a few yards to one side of the path.

Without an instant’s hesitation she swung herself up the steep incline, climbing with a rapidity that swiftly cut off the landward line of retreat.  She would give her assailant a fright for his pains if nothing better.

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.