e you
haven't dragged me through this Polar expedition merely because two men
with an eye for a picture saw St. Clare's broken sword."

"No," cried Father Brown, with a sharp voice like a pistol shot; "but
who saw his unbroken sword?"

"What do you mean?" cried the other, and stood still under the stars.
They had come abruptly out of the grey gates of the wood.

"I say, who saw his unbroken sword?" repeated Father Brown obstinately.
"Not the writer of the diary, anyhow; the general sheathed it in time."

Flambeau looked about him in the moonlight, as a man struck blind
might look in the sun; and his friend went on, for the first time with
eagerness:

"Flambeau," he cried, "I cannot prove it, even after hunting through the
tombs. But I am sure of it. Let me add just one more tiny fact that tips
the whole thing over. The colonel, by a strange chance, was one of the
first struck by a bullet. He was struck long before the troops came to
close quarters. But he saw St. Clare's sword broken. Why was it broken?
How was it broken? My friend, it was broken before the battle."

"Oh!" said his friend, with a sort of forlorn jocularity; "and pray
where is the other piece?"

"I can tell you," said the priest promptly. "In the northeast corner of
the cemetery of the Protestant Cathedral at Belfast."

"Indeed?" inquired the other. "Have you looked for it?"

"I couldn't," replied Brown, with frank regret. "There's a great marble
monument on top of it; a monument to the heroic Major Murray, who fell
fighting gloriously at the famous Battle of the Black River."

Flambeau seemed suddenly galvanised into existence. "You mean," he cried
hoarsely, "that General St. Clare hated Murray, and murdered him on the
field of battle because--"

"You are still full of good and pure thoughts," said the other. "It was
worse than that."

"Well," said the large man, "my stock of evil imagination is used up."

The priest seemed really doubtful where to begin, and at last he said
again:

"Where would a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest."

The other did not answer.

"If there were no forest, he would make a forest. And if he wished to
hide a dead leaf, he would make a dead forest."

There was still no reply, and the priest added still more mildly and
quietly:

"And if a man had to hide a dead body, he would make a field of dead
bodies to hide it in."

Flambeau began to stamp forward with an intolerance of delay in time
or space; but