are the tales, of course," said the Admiral, shrugging his
shoulders; "and some of them, I don't deny, on evidence as decent as
one ever gets for such things. Someone saw a blaze hereabout, don't you
know, as he walked home through a wood; someone keeping sheep on the
uplands inland thought he saw a flame hovering over Pendragon Tower.
Well, a damp dab of mud like this confounded island seems the last place
where one would think of fires."

"What is that fire over there?" asked Father Brown with a gentle
suddenness, pointing to the woods on the left river-bank. They were all
thrown a little off their balance, and the more fanciful Fanshaw had
even some difficulty in recovering his, as they saw a long, thin stream
of blue smoke ascending silently into the end of the evening light.

Then Pendragon broke into a scornful laugh again. "Gipsies!" he said;
"they've been camping about here for about a week. Gentlemen, you want
your dinner," and he turned as if to enter the house.

But the antiquarian superstition in Fanshaw was still quivering, and he
said hastily: "But, Admiral, what's that hissing noise quite near the
island? It's very like fire."

"It's more like what it is," said the Admiral, laughing as he led the
way; "it's only some canoe going by."

Almost as he spoke, the butler, a lean man in black, with very black
hair and a very long, yellow face, appeared in the doorway and told him
that dinner was served.

The dining-room was as nautical as the cabin of a ship; but its note
was rather that of the modern than the Elizabethan captain. There were,
indeed, three antiquated cutlasses in a trophy over the fireplace, and
one brown sixteenth-century map with Tritons and little ships dotted
about a curly sea. But such things were less prominent on the white
panelling than some cases of quaint-coloured South American birds, very
scientifically stuffed, fantastic shells from the Pacific, and several
instruments so rude and queer in shape that savages might have used
them either to kill their enemies or to cook them. But the alien colour
culminated in the fact that, besides the butler, the Admiral's only
servants were two negroes, somewhat quaintly clad in tight uniforms of
yellow. The priest's instinctive trick of analysing his own impressions
told him that the colour and the little neat coat-tails of these bipeds
had suggested the word "Canary," and so by a mere pun connected them
with southward travel. Towards the en