wo swords sparkled from
point to pommel like two diamond pins. There was something frightful
in the two figures appearing so little and so gay. They looked like two
butterflies trying to pin each other to a cork.

Father Brown ran as hard as he could, his little legs going like a
wheel. But when he came to the field of combat he found he was born too
late and too early--too late to stop the strife, under the shadow of the
grim Sicilians leaning on their oars, and too early to anticipate any
disastrous issue of it. For the two men were singularly well matched,
the prince using his skill with a sort of cynical confidence, the
Sicilian using his with a murderous care. Few finer fencing matches can
ever have been seen in crowded amphitheatres than that which tinkled and
sparkled on that forgotten island in the reedy river. The dizzy fight
was balanced so long that hope began to revive in the protesting priest;
by all common probability Paul must soon come back with the police. It
would be some comfort even if Flambeau came back from his fishing, for
Flambeau, physically speaking, was worth four other men. But there was
no sign of Flambeau, and, what was much queerer, no sign of Paul or the
police. No other raft or stick was left to float on; in that lost
island in that vast nameless pool, they were cut off as on a rock in the
Pacific.

Almost as he had the thought the ringing of the rapiers quickened to a
rattle, the prince's arms flew up, and the point shot out behind between
his shoulder-blades. He went over with a great whirling movement, almost
like one throwing the half of a boy's cart-wheel. The sword flew from
his hand like a shooting star, and dived into the distant river. And
he himself sank with so earth-shaking a subsidence that he broke a
big rose-tree with his body and shook up into the sky a cloud of red
earth--like the smoke of some heathen sacrifice. The Sicilian had made
blood-offering to the ghost of his father.

The priest was instantly on his knees by the corpse; but only to make
too sure that it was a corpse. As he was still trying some last hopeless
tests he heard for the first time voices from farther up the river, and
saw a police boat shoot up to the landing-stage, with constables and
other important people, including the excited Paul. The little priest
rose with a distinctly dubious grimace.

"Now, why on earth," he muttered, "why on earth couldn't he have come
before?"

Some seven minutes la