es even to pray," said Father Brown. "Heights were made to be
looked at, not to be looked from."

"Do you mean that one may fall over," asked Wilfred.

"I mean that one's soul may fall if one's body doesn't," said the other
priest.

"I scarcely understand you," remarked Bohun indistinctly.

"Look at that blacksmith, for instance," went on Father Brown calmly; "a
good man, but not a Christian--hard, imperious, unforgiving. Well, his
Scotch religion was made up by men who prayed on hills and high crags,
and learnt to look down on the world more than to look up at heaven.
Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley;
only small things from the peak."

"But he--he didn't do it," said Bohun tremulously.

"No," said the other in an odd voice; "we know he didn't do it."

After a moment he resumed, looking tranquilly out over the plain with
his pale grey eyes. "I knew a man," he said, "who began by worshipping
with others before the altar, but who grew fond of high and lonely
places to pray from, corners or niches in the belfry or the spire. And
once in one of those dizzy places, where the whole world seemed to turn
under him like a wheel, his brain turned also, and he fancied he was
God. So that, though he was a good man, he committed a great crime."

Wilfred's face was turned away, but his bony hands turned blue and white
as they tightened on the parapet of stone.

"He thought it was given to him to judge the world and strike down the
sinner. He would never have had such a thought if he had been kneeling
with other men upon a floor. But he saw all men walking about like
insects. He saw one especially strutting just below him, insolent and
evident by a bright green hat--a poisonous insect."

Rooks cawed round the corners of the belfry; but there was no other
sound till Father Brown went on.

"This also tempted him, that he had in his hand one of the most awful
engines of nature; I mean gravitation, that mad and quickening rush by
which all earth's creatures fly back to her heart when released. See,
the inspector is strutting just below us in the smithy. If I were to
toss a pebble over this parapet it would be something like a bullet
by the time it struck him. If I were to drop a hammer--even a small
hammer--"

Wilfred Bohun threw one leg over the parapet, and Father Brown had him
in a minute by the collar.

"Not by that door," he said quite gently; "that door leads to hell."

Bohun s