entin shortly. "Is Hampstead Heath near here?"

"Straight on for fifteen minutes," said the woman, "and you'll come
right out on the open." Valentin sprang out of the shop and began to
run. The other detectives followed him at a reluctant trot.

The street they threaded was so narrow and shut in by shadows that when
they came out unexpectedly into the void common and vast sky they were
startled to find the evening still so light and clear. A perfect dome
of peacock-green sank into gold amid the blackening trees and the dark
violet distances. The glowing green tint was just deep enough to pick
out in points of crystal one or two stars. All that was left of the
daylight lay in a golden glitter across the edge of Hampstead and that
popular hollow which is called the Vale of Health. The holiday makers
who roam this region had not wholly dispersed; a few couples sat
shapelessly on benches; and here and there a distant girl still shrieked
in one of the swings. The glory of heaven deepened and darkened around
the sublime vulgarity of man; and standing on the slope and looking
across the valley, Valentin beheld the thing which he sought.

Among the black and breaking groups in that distance was one especially
black which did not break--a group of two figures clerically clad.
Though they seemed as small as insects, Valentin could see that one of
them was much smaller than the other. Though the other had a student's
stoop and an inconspicuous manner, he could see that the man was well
over six feet high. He shut his teeth and went forward, whirling his
stick impatiently. By the time he had substantially diminished the
distance and magnified the two black figures as in a vast microscope,
he had perceived something else; something which startled him, and yet
which he had somehow expected. Whoever was the tall priest, there could
be no doubt about the identity of the short one. It was his friend of
the Harwich train, the stumpy little cure of Essex whom he had warned
about his brown paper parcels.

Now, so far as this went, everything fitted in finally and rationally
enough. Valentin had learned by his inquiries that morning that a Father
Brown from Essex was bringing up a silver cross with sapphires, a
relic of considerable value, to show some of the foreign priests at the
congress. This undoubtedly was the "silver with blue stones"; and Father
Brown undoubtedly was the little greenhorn in the train. Now there
was nothing wonder