ve
done it."

A shudder of superstition went through the slight figure of the curate.
"I can hardly understand," he said.

"Mr. Bohun," said the doctor in a low voice, "metaphors literally fail
me. It is inadequate to say that the skull was smashed to bits like an
eggshell. Fragments of bone were driven into the body and the ground
like bullets into a mud wall. It was the hand of a giant."

He was silent a moment, looking grimly through his glasses; then he
added: "The thing has one advantage--that it clears most people of
suspicion at one stroke. If you or I or any normally made man in the
country were accused of this crime, we should be acquitted as an infant
would be acquitted of stealing the Nelson column."

"That's what I say," repeated the cobbler obstinately; "there's only one
man that could have done it, and he's the man that would have done it.
Where's Simeon Barnes, the blacksmith?"

"He's over at Greenford," faltered the curate.

"More likely over in France," muttered the cobbler.

"No; he is in neither of those places," said a small and colourless
voice, which came from the little Roman priest who had joined the group.
"As a matter of fact, he is coming up the road at this moment."

The little priest was not an interesting man to look at, having stubbly
brown hair and a round and stolid face. But if he had been as splendid
as Apollo no one would have looked at him at that moment. Everyone
turned round and peered at the pathway which wound across the plain
below, along which was indeed walking, at his own huge stride and with
a hammer on his shoulder, Simeon the smith. He was a bony and gigantic
man, with deep, dark, sinister eyes and a dark chin beard. He was
walking and talking quietly with two other men; and though he was never
specially cheerful, he seemed quite at his ease.

"My God!" cried the atheistic cobbler, "and there's the hammer he did it
with."

"No," said the inspector, a sensible-looking man with a sandy moustache,
speaking for the first time. "There's the hammer he did it with over
there by the church wall. We have left it and the body exactly as they
are."

All glanced round and the short priest went across and looked down in
silence at the tool where it lay. It was one of the smallest and the
lightest of the hammers, and would not have caught the eye among the
rest; but on the iron edge of it were blood and yellow hair.

After a silence the short priest spoke without looking