oken up, they heard
voices from the others. The priest looked up quietly and then looked
down again as he heard the blacksmith say in a loud voice:

"I hope I've convinced you, Mr. Inspector. I'm a strong man, as you say,
but I couldn't have flung my hammer bang here from Greenford. My hammer
hasn't got wings that it should come flying half a mile over hedges and
fields."

The inspector laughed amicably and said: "No, I think you can be
considered out of it, though it's one of the rummiest coincidences I
ever saw. I can only ask you to give us all the assistance you can in
finding a man as big and strong as yourself. By George! you might be
useful, if only to hold him! I suppose you yourself have no guess at the
man?"

"I may have a guess," said the pale smith, "but it is not at a man."
Then, seeing the scared eyes turn towards his wife on the bench, he put
his huge hand on her shoulder and said: "Nor a woman either."

"What do you mean?" asked the inspector jocularly. "You don't think cows
use hammers, do you?"

"I think no thing of flesh held that hammer," said the blacksmith in a
stifled voice; "mortally speaking, I think the man died alone."

Wilfred made a sudden forward movement and peered at him with burning
eyes.

"Do you mean to say, Barnes," came the sharp voice of the cobbler, "that
the hammer jumped up of itself and knocked the man down?"

"Oh, you gentlemen may stare and snigger," cried Simeon; "you clergymen
who tell us on Sunday in what a stillness the Lord smote Sennacherib. I
believe that One who walks invisible in every house defended the honour
of mine, and laid the defiler dead before the door of it. I believe the
force in that blow was just the force there is in earthquakes, and no
force less."

Wilfred said, with a voice utterly undescribable: "I told Norman myself
to beware of the thunderbolt."

"That agent is outside my jurisdiction," said the inspector with a
slight smile.

"You are not outside His," answered the smith; "see you to it," and,
turning his broad back, he went into the house.

The shaken Wilfred was led away by Father Brown, who had an easy and
friendly way with him. "Let us get out of this horrid place, Mr. Bohun,"
he said. "May I look inside your church? I hear it's one of the oldest
in England. We take some interest, you know," he added with a comical
grimace, "in old English churches."

Wilfred Bohun did not smile, for humour was never his strong point. But
he