up, and there was
a new note in his dull voice. "Mr. Gibbs was hardly right," he said, "in
saying that there is no mystery. There is at least the mystery of why so
big a man should attempt so big a blow with so little a hammer."

"Oh, never mind that," cried Gibbs, in a fever. "What are we to do with
Simeon Barnes?"

"Leave him alone," said the priest quietly. "He is coming here of
himself. I know those two men with him. They are very good fellows from
Greenford, and they have come over about the Presbyterian chapel."

Even as he spoke the tall smith swung round the corner of the church,
and strode into his own yard. Then he stood there quite still, and the
hammer fell from his hand. The inspector, who had preserved impenetrable
propriety, immediately went up to him.

"I won't ask you, Mr. Barnes," he said, "whether you know anything about
what has happened here. You are not bound to say. I hope you don't know,
and that you will be able to prove it. But I must go through the form
of arresting you in the King's name for the murder of Colonel Norman
Bohun."

"You are not bound to say anything," said the cobbler in officious
excitement. "They've got to prove everything. They haven't proved yet
that it is Colonel Bohun, with the head all smashed up like that."

"That won't wash," said the doctor aside to the priest. "That's out of
the detective stories. I was the colonel's medical man, and I knew his
body better than he did. He had very fine hands, but quite peculiar
ones. The second and third fingers were the same length. Oh, that's the
colonel right enough."

As he glanced at the brained corpse upon the ground the iron eyes of the
motionless blacksmith followed them and rested there also.

"Is Colonel Bohun dead?" said the smith quite calmly. "Then he's
damned."

"Don't say anything! Oh, don't say anything," cried the atheist cobbler,
dancing about in an ecstasy of admiration of the English legal system.
For no man is such a legalist as the good Secularist.

The blacksmith turned on him over his shoulder the august face of a
fanatic.

"It's well for you infidels to dodge like foxes because the world's law
favours you," he said; "but God guards His own in His pocket, as you
shall see this day."

Then he pointed to the colonel and said: "When did this dog die in his
sins?"

"Moderate your language," said the doctor.

"Moderate the Bible's language, and I'll moderate mine. When did he
die?"

"I saw him a