n daylight, in Mrs. Cazenove's room, could not have been used to light
the table-top, in the full glare of the window; therefore it had been used
for some other purpose--_what_ purpose I could not, at the moment, guess.
Habitual thieves, you know, often have curious superstitions, and some
will never take anything without leaving something behind--a pebble or a
piece of coal, or something like that--in the premises they have been
robbing. It seemed at first extremely likely that this was a case of that
kind. The match had clearly been _brought in_--because, when I asked for
matches, there were none in the stand, not even an empty box, and the room
had not been disturbed. Also the match probably had not been struck there,
nothing having been heard, although, of course, a mistake in this matter
was just possible. This match, then, it was fair to assume, had been lit
somewhere else and blown out immediately--I remarked at the time that it
was very little burned. Plainly it could not have been treated thus for
nothing, and the only possible object would have been to prevent it
igniting accidentally. Following on this, it became obvious that the match
was used, for whatever purpose, not _as_ a match, but merely as a
convenient splinter of wood.

"So far so good. But on examining the match very closely I observed, as
you can see for yourself, certain rather sharp indentations in the wood.
They are very small, you see, and scarcely visible, except upon narrow
inspection; but there they are, and their positions are regular. See,
there are two on each side, each opposite the corresponding mark of the
other pair. The match, in fact, would seem to have been gripped in some
fairly sharp instrument, holding it at two points above and two below--an
instrument, as it may at once strike you, not unlike the beak of a bird.

"Now here was an idea. What living creature but a bird could possibly have
entered Mrs. Heath's window without a ladder--supposing no ladder to have
been used--or could have got into Mrs. Armitage's window without lifting
the sash higher than the eight or ten inches it was already open? Plainly,
nothing. Further, it is significant that only _one_ article was stolen at
a time, although others were about. A human being could have carried any
reasonable number, but a bird could only take one at a time. But why
should a bird carry a match in its beak? Certainly it must have been
trained to do that for a purpose, and a lit