he room and never
reappeared in the countryside; and since then Exmoor has been feared
more for a warlock than even for a landlord and a magistrate.

Now Dr Mull told his story with rather wild theatrical gestures, and
with a passion I think at least partisan. I was quite conscious of the
possibility that the whole was the extravagance of an old braggart and
gossip. But before I end this half of my discoveries, I think it due to
Dr Mull to record that my two first inquiries have confirmed his story.
I learned from an old apothecary in the village that there was a bald
man in evening dress, giving the name of Green, who came to him one
night to have a three-cornered cut on his forehead plastered. And
I learnt from the legal records and old newspapers that there was a
lawsuit threatened, and at least begun, by one Green against the Duke of
Exmoor.

Mr Nutt, of the Daily Reformer, wrote some highly incongruous words
across the top of the copy, made some highly mysterious marks down
the side of it, and called to Miss Barlow in the same loud, monotonous
voice: "Take down a letter to Mr Finn."

DEAR FINN,--Your copy will do, but I have had to headline it a bit; and
our public would never stand a Romanist priest in the story--you
must keep your eye on the suburbs. I've altered him to Mr Brown, a
Spiritualist.

Yours,

E. NUTT.

A day or two afterward found the active and judicious editor examining,
with blue eyes that seemed to grow rounder and rounder, the second
instalment of Mr Finn's tale of mysteries in high life. It began with
the words:

I have made an astounding discovery. I freely confess it is quite
different from anything I expected to discover, and will give a much
more practical shock to the public. I venture to say, without any
vanity, that the words I now write will be read all over Europe, and
certainly all over America and the Colonies. And yet I heard all I have
to tell before I left this same little wooden table in this same little
wood of apple-trees.

I owe it all to the small priest Brown; he is an extraordinary man. The
big librarian had left the table, perhaps ashamed of his long tongue,
perhaps anxious about the storm in which his mysterious master had
vanished: anyway, he betook himself heavily in the Duke's tracks through
the trees. Father Brown had picked up one of the lemons and was eyeing
it with an odd pleasure.

"What a lovely colour a lemon is!" he said. "There's one thing I