utler as a sort of
steward or, even, chamberlain; he dined privately, but with almost
as much pomp as his master; he was feared by all the servants; and he
consulted with the prince decorously, but somewhat unbendingly--rather
as if he were the prince's solicitor. The sombre housekeeper was a mere
shadow in comparison; indeed, she seemed to efface herself and wait only
on the butler, and Brown heard no more of those volcanic whispers which
had half told him of the younger brother who blackmailed the elder.
Whether the prince was really being thus bled by the absent captain,
he could not be certain, but there was something insecure and secretive
about Saradine that made the tale by no means incredible.

When they went once more into the long hall with the windows and the
mirrors, yellow evening was dropping over the waters and the willowy
banks; and a bittern sounded in the distance like an elf upon his
dwarfish drum. The same singular sentiment of some sad and evil
fairyland crossed the priest's mind again like a little grey cloud. "I
wish Flambeau were back," he muttered.

"Do you believe in doom?" asked the restless Prince Saradine suddenly.

"No," answered his guest. "I believe in Doomsday."

The prince turned from the window and stared at him in a singular
manner, his face in shadow against the sunset. "What do you mean?" he
asked.

"I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry," answered
Father Brown. "The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything;
they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come
on the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person."

The prince made an inexplicable noise like an animal; in his shadowed
face the eyes were shining queerly. A new and shrewd thought exploded
silently in the other's mind. Was there another meaning in Saradine's
blend of brilliancy and abruptness? Was the prince--Was he perfectly
sane? He was repeating, "The wrong person--the wrong person," many more
times than was natural in a social exclamation.

Then Father Brown awoke tardily to a second truth. In the mirrors before
him he could see the silent door standing open, and the silent Mr. Paul
standing in it, with his usual pallid impassiveness.

"I thought it better to announce at once," he said, with the same stiff
respectfulness as of an old family lawyer, "a boat rowed by six men
has come to the landing-stage, and there's a gentleman sitting in th