last find.

The singing of the birds seemed to grow louder about them, and the dance
of the green summer leaves was repeated beyond in the dance of the green
summer sea. Only the great roots of the mysterious trees could be seen,
the rest being far aloft, and all round it was a wood of little, lively
and happy things. They might have been two innocent naturalists, or even
two children fishing for eels or tittlebats on that summer holiday when
Paynter pulled up something that weighed in the net more heavily than
any bone. It nearly broke the meshes, and fell against a mossy stone
with a clang.

"Truth lies at the bottom of a well," cried the American, with lift in
his voice. "The woodman's ax."

It lay, indeed, flat and gleaming in the grasses by the well in the
wood, just as it had lain in the thicket where the woodman threw it in
the beginning of all these things. But on one corner of the bright blade
was a dull brown stain.

"I see," said Ashe, "the woodman's ax, and therefore the Woodman. Your
deductions are rapid."

"My deductions are reasonable," said Paynter, "Look here, Mr. Ashe; I
know what you're thinking. I know you distrust Treherne; but I'm
sure you will be just for all that. To begin with, surely the first
assumption is that the woodman's ax is used by the Woodman. What have
you to say to it?"

"I say 'No' to it," replied the lawyer. "The last weapon a woodman would
use would be a woodman's ax; that is if he is a sane man."

"He isn't," said Paynter quietly; "you said you wanted the doctor's
opinion just now. The doctor's opinion on this point is the same as my
own. We both found him meandering about outside there; it's obvious this
business has gone to his head, at any rate. If the murderer were a
man of business like yourself, what you say might be sound. But this
murderer is a mystic. He was driven by some fanatical fad about the
trees. It's quite likely he thought there was something solemn and
sacrificial about the ax, and would have liked to cut off Vane's head
before a crowd, like Charles I's. He's looking for the ax still, and
probably thinks it a holy relic."

"For which reason," said Ashe, smiling, "he instantly chucked it down a
well."

Paynter laughed.

"You have me there certainly," he said. "But I think you have something
else in your mind. You'll say, I suppose, that we were all watching the
wood; but were we? Frankly, I could almost fancy the peacock trees did
strike me with a