on.
I entertain no doubt that Smith led the Revered Percy into the crime
and forced him to hide his head in the real crim'nal class.
That would fully account for his non-appearance, and the failure
of all attempts to trace him."

"It is impossible, then, to trace him?" asked Moon.

"Impossible," repeated the specialist, shutting his eyes.

"You are sure it's impossible?"

"Oh dry up, Michael," cried Gould, irritably. "We'd 'ave found
'im if we could, for you bet 'e saw the burglary. Don't YOU
start looking for 'im. Look for your own 'ead in the dustbin.
You'll find that--after a bit," and his voice died away in grumbling.

"Arthur," directed Michael Moon, sitting down, "kindly read
Mr. Raymond Percy's letter to the court."

"Wishing, as Mr. Moon has said, to shorten the proceedings as much
as possible," began Inglewood, "I will not read the first part
of the letter sent to us. It is only fair to the prosecution
to admit the account given by the second clergyman fully ratifies,
as far as facts are concerned, that given by the first clergyman.
We concede, then, the canon's story so far as it goes.
This must necessarily be valuable to the prosecutor and also convenient
to the court. I begin Mr. Percy's letter, then, at the point
when all three men were standing on the garden wall:--

"As I watched Hawkins wavering on the wall, I made up my own mind
not to waver. A cloud of wrath was on my brain, like the cloud
of copper fog on the houses and gardens round. My decision was
violent and simple; yet the thoughts that led up to it were so
complicated and contradictory that I could not retrace them now.
I knew Hawkins was a kind, innocent gentleman; and I would have
given ten pounds for the pleasure of kicking him down the road.
That God should allow good people to be as bestially stupid as that--
rose against me like a towering blasphemy.

"At Oxford, I fear, I had the artistic temperament rather badly;
and artists love to be limited. I liked the church as a pretty pattern;
discipline was mere decoration. I delighted in mere divisions of time;
I liked eating fish on Friday. But then I like fish; and the fast
was made for men who like meat. Then I came to Hoxton and found men
who had fasted for five hundred years; men who had to gnaw fish because
they could not get meat--and fish-bones when they could not get fish.
As too many British officers treat the army as a review, so I had treated
the Church Militan