rare with him, and when they reached the castle again he threw
himself upon sleep with the simplicity of a dog.

Despite his mystic praise of slumber, Father Brown was up earlier than
anyone else except the silent gardener; and was found smoking a big
pipe and watching that expert at his speechless labours in the kitchen
garden. Towards daybreak the rocking storm had ended in roaring rains,
and the day came with a curious freshness. The gardener seemed even
to have been conversing, but at sight of the detectives he planted
his spade sullenly in a bed and, saying something about his breakfast,
shifted along the lines of cabbages and shut himself in the kitchen.
"He's a valuable man, that," said Father Brown. "He does the potatoes
amazingly. Still," he added, with a dispassionate charity, "he has his
faults; which of us hasn't? He doesn't dig this bank quite regularly.
There, for instance," and he stamped suddenly on one spot. "I'm really
very doubtful about that potato."

"And why?" asked Craven, amused with the little man's hobby.

"I'm doubtful about it," said the other, "because old Gow was doubtful
about it himself. He put his spade in methodically in every place but
just this. There must be a mighty fine potato just here."

Flambeau pulled up the spade and impetuously drove it into the place.
He turned up, under a load of soil, something that did not look like a
potato, but rather like a monstrous, over-domed mushroom. But it struck
the spade with a cold click; it rolled over like a ball, and grinned up
at them.

"The Earl of Glengyle," said Brown sadly, and looked down heavily at the
skull.

Then, after a momentary meditation, he plucked the spade from Flambeau,
and, saying "We must hide it again," clamped the skull down in the
earth. Then he leaned his little body and huge head on the great handle
of the spade, that stood up stiffly in the earth, and his eyes were
empty and his forehead full of wrinkles. "If one could only conceive,"
he muttered, "the meaning of this last monstrosity." And leaning on
the large spade handle, he buried his brows in his hands, as men do in
church.

All the corners of the sky were brightening into blue and silver; the
birds were chattering in the tiny garden trees; so loud it seemed as if
the trees themselves were talking. But the three men were silent enough.

"Well, I give it all up," said Flambeau at last boisterously. "My brain
and this world don't fit each other; and the