ing stamp, numbering not a quarter
of the steps, but occupying about the same time. The moment the last
echoing stamp had died away would come again the run or ripple of light,
hurrying feet, and then again the thud of the heavier walking. It was
certainly the same pair of boots, partly because (as has been said)
there were no other boots about, and partly because they had a small
but unmistakable creak in them. Father Brown had the kind of head that
cannot help asking questions; and on this apparently trivial question
his head almost split. He had seen men run in order to jump. He had seen
men run in order to slide. But why on earth should a man run in order
to walk? Or, again, why should he walk in order to run? Yet no other
description would cover the antics of this invisible pair of legs. The
man was either walking very fast down one-half of the corridor in order
to walk very slow down the other half; or he was walking very slow
at one end to have the rapture of walking fast at the other. Neither
suggestion seemed to make much sense. His brain was growing darker and
darker, like his room.

Yet, as he began to think steadily, the very blackness of his cell
seemed to make his thoughts more vivid; he began to see as in a kind of
vision the fantastic feet capering along the corridor in unnatural or
symbolic attitudes. Was it a heathen religious dance? Or some entirely
new kind of scientific exercise? Father Brown began to ask himself with
more exactness what the steps suggested. Taking the slow step first: it
certainly was not the step of the proprietor. Men of his type walk
with a rapid waddle, or they sit still. It could not be any servant or
messenger waiting for directions. It did not sound like it. The poorer
orders (in an oligarchy) sometimes lurch about when they are slightly
drunk, but generally, and especially in such gorgeous scenes, they stand
or sit in constrained attitudes. No; that heavy yet springy step, with
a kind of careless emphasis, not specially noisy, yet not caring what
noise it made, belonged to only one of the animals of this earth. It was
a gentleman of western Europe, and probably one who had never worked for
his living.

Just as he came to this solid certainty, the step changed to the quicker
one, and ran past the door as feverishly as a rat. The listener remarked
that though this step was much swifter it was also much more noiseless,
almost as if the man were walking on tiptoe. Yet it was n