taggered back against the wall, and stared at him with frightful
eyes.

"How do you know all this?" he cried. "Are you a devil?"

"I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all
devils in my heart. Listen to me," he said after a short pause. "I know
what you did--at least, I can guess the great part of it. When you left
your brother you were racked with no unrighteous rage, to the extent
even that you snatched up a small hammer, half inclined to kill him with
his foulness on his mouth. Recoiling, you thrust it under your buttoned
coat instead, and rushed into the church. You pray wildly in many
places, under the angel window, upon the platform above, and a higher
platform still, from which you could see the colonel's Eastern hat like
the back of a green beetle crawling about. Then something snapped in
your soul, and you let God's thunderbolt fall."

Wilfred put a weak hand to his head, and asked in a low voice: "How did
you know that his hat looked like a green beetle?"

"Oh, that," said the other with the shadow of a smile, "that was common
sense. But hear me further. I say I know all this; but no one else shall
know it. The next step is for you; I shall take no more steps; I will
seal this with the seal of confession. If you ask me why, there are many
reasons, and only one that concerns you. I leave things to you because
you have not yet gone very far wrong, as assassins go. You did not help
to fix the crime on the smith when it was easy; or on his wife, when
that was easy. You tried to fix it on the imbecile because you knew that
he could not suffer. That was one of the gleams that it is my business
to find in assassins. And now come down into the village, and go your
own way as free as the wind; for I have said my last word."

They went down the winding stairs in utter silence, and came out into
the sunlight by the smithy. Wilfred Bohun carefully unlatched the wooden
gate of the yard, and going up to the inspector, said: "I wish to give
myself up; I have killed my brother."

The Eye of Apollo

That singular smoky sparkle, at once a confusion and a transparency,
which is the strange secret of the Thames, was changing more and more
from its grey to its glittering extreme as the sun climbed to the zenith
over Westminster, and two men crossed Westminster Bridge. One man
was very tall and the other very short; they might even have been
fantastically compared to the arrogant clock-tower