sent-mindedly. "There was
a crooked man and he went a crooked mile.... That man, I fancy, has gone
a very crooked road--by following his nose."

"Why, what's he done?" she demanded, rather shakily.

"I don't want to force your confidence by a hair," said Father Brown,
very quietly. "But I think you could tell me more about that than I can
tell you."

The girl sprang to her feet and stood quite quietly, but with clenched
hands, like one about to stride away; then her hands loosened slowly,
and she sat down again. "You are more of a mystery than all the others,"
she said desperately, "but I feel there might be a heart in your
mystery."

"What we all dread most," said the priest in a low voice, "is a maze
with no centre. That is why atheism is only a nightmare." "I will tell
you everything," said the red-haired girl doggedly, "except why I am
telling you; and that I don't know."

She picked at the darned table-cloth and went on: "You look as if you
knew what isn't snobbery as well as what is; and when I say that ours
is a good old family, you'll understand it is a necessary part of the
story; indeed, my chief danger is in my brother's high-and-dry notions,
noblesse oblige and all that. Well, my name is Christabel Carstairs; and
my father was that Colonel Carstairs you've probably heard of, who made
the famous Carstairs Collection of Roman coins. I could never describe
my father to you; the nearest I can say is that he was very like a Roman
coin himself. He was as handsome and as genuine and as valuable and as
metallic and as out-of-date. He was prouder of his Collection than of
his coat-of-arms--nobody could say more than that. His extraordinary
character came out most in his will. He had two sons and one daughter.
He quarrelled with one son, my brother Giles, and sent him to Australia
on a small allowance. He then made a will leaving the Carstairs
Collection, actually with a yet smaller allowance, to my brother Arthur.
He meant it as a reward, as the highest honour he could offer, in
acknowledgement of Arthur's loyalty and rectitude and the distinctions
he had already gained in mathematics and economics at Cambridge. He left
me practically all his pretty large fortune; and I am sure he meant it
in contempt.

"Arthur, you may say, might well complain of this; but Arthur is my
father over again. Though he had some differences with my father in
early youth, no sooner had he taken over the Collection than he became
li