It was a wonderful morning.
About two hundred yards past my cottage the road, which from the village ran perfectly straight, took a sharp turn inland, leaving the coast abruptly on account of the greater stretch of marshland beyond.

It was towards this bend that I walked, and curiously enough, with every step I took some inexplicable sense of nervous excitement grew stronger and stronger within me.

The fresh morning air and the sunlight seemed powerless to dissipate for a moment the haunting terror of last night.
It was a real face which I had seen pressed against the window, and where had Ray been when he returned with sand-clogged boots and the telltale seaweed upon his trousers?
And later on, had I dreamed it, or had there really been a cry?
It came back to me with horrible distinctness.

It was a real cry, the cry of a man in terror for his life.

I stopped short in the road and wiped my damp forehead.