clear.

The defending counsel also was again brief in his cross-examination;
although (as was his custom) even in being brief, he seemed to take a
long time about it. "You used a rather remarkable expression," he said,
looking at Cutler sleepily. "What do you mean by saying that it looked
more like a beast than a man or a woman?"

Cutler seemed seriously agitated. "Perhaps I oughtn't to have said
that," he said; "but when the brute has huge humped shoulders like a
chimpanzee, and bristles sticking out of its head like a pig--"

Mr Butler cut short his curious impatience in the middle. "Never mind
whether its hair was like a pig's," he said, "was it like a woman's?"

"A woman's!" cried the soldier. "Great Scott, no!"

"The last witness said it was," commented the counsel, with unscrupulous
swiftness. "And did the figure have any of those serpentine and
semi-feminine curves to which eloquent allusion has been made? No? No
feminine curves? The figure, if I understand you, was rather heavy and
square than otherwise?"

"He may have been bending forward," said Cutler, in a hoarse and rather
faint voice.

"Or again, he may not," said Mr Butler, and sat down suddenly for the
second time.

The third, witness called by Sir Walter Cowdray was the little Catholic
clergyman, so little, compared with the others, that his head seemed
hardly to come above the box, so that it was like cross-examining a
child. But unfortunately Sir Walter had somehow got it into his head
(mostly by some ramifications of his family's religion) that Father
Brown was on the side of the prisoner, because the prisoner was wicked
and foreign and even partly black. Therefore he took Father Brown up
sharply whenever that proud pontiff tried to explain anything; and told
him to answer yes or no, and tell the plain facts without any jesuitry.
When Father Brown began, in his simplicity, to say who he thought the
man in the passage was, the barrister told him that he did not want his
theories.

"A black shape was seen in the passage. And you say you saw the black
shape. Well, what shape was it?"

Father Brown blinked as under rebuke; but he had long known the literal
nature of obedience. "The shape," he said, "was short and thick, but had
two sharp, black projections curved upwards on each side of the head or
top, rather like horns, and--"

"Oh! the devil with horns, no doubt," ejaculated Cowdray, sitting down
in triumphant jocularity. "It was the devi