nd I
thank God that I see the criminal clearly now--because he is a criminal
who cannot be brought to the gallows."

"You will not denounce him?" inquired the doctor.

"He would not be hanged if I did denounce him," answered Wilfred with
a wild but curiously happy smile. "When I went into the church this
morning I found a madman praying there--that poor Joe, who has been
wrong all his life. God knows what he prayed; but with such strange folk
it is not incredible to suppose that their prayers are all upside down.
Very likely a lunatic would pray before killing a man. When I last saw
poor Joe he was with my brother. My brother was mocking him."

"By Jove!" cried the doctor, "this is talking at last. But how do you
explain--"

The Rev. Wilfred was almost trembling with the excitement of his
own glimpse of the truth. "Don't you see; don't you see," he cried
feverishly; "that is the only theory that covers both the queer things,
that answers both the riddles. The two riddles are the little hammer and
the big blow. The smith might have struck the big blow, but would not
have chosen the little hammer. His wife would have chosen the little
hammer, but she could not have struck the big blow. But the madman might
have done both. As for the little hammer--why, he was mad and might have
picked up anything. And for the big blow, have you never heard, doctor,
that a maniac in his paroxysm may have the strength of ten men?"

The doctor drew a deep breath and then said, "By golly, I believe you've
got it."

Father Brown had fixed his eyes on the speaker so long and steadily
as to prove that his large grey, ox-like eyes were not quite so
insignificant as the rest of his face. When silence had fallen he said
with marked respect: "Mr. Bohun, yours is the only theory yet propounded
which holds water every way and is essentially unassailable. I think,
therefore, that you deserve to be told, on my positive knowledge, that
it is not the true one." And with that the old little man walked away
and stared again at the hammer.

"That fellow seems to know more than he ought to," whispered the doctor
peevishly to Wilfred. "Those popish priests are deucedly sly."

"No, no," said Bohun, with a sort of wild fatigue. "It was the lunatic.
It was the lunatic."

The group of the two clerics and the doctor had fallen away from
the more official group containing the inspector and the man he had
arrested. Now, however, that their own party had br