t the door in
his face. That is my crime, Father Brown, and I don't know what penance
you would inflict for it."

"I shan't inflict any penance," said the clerical gentleman, collecting
his heavy hat and umbrella with an air of some amusement; "quite the
contrary. I came here specially to let you off the little penance which
would otherwise have followed your little offence."

"And what," asked Boulnois, smiling, "is the little penance I have so
luckily been let off?"

"Being hanged," said Father Brown.

TWELVE -- The Fairy Tale of Father Brown

THE picturesque city and state of Heiligwaldenstein was one of those toy
kingdoms of which certain parts of the German Empire still consist. It
had come under the Prussian hegemony quite late in history--hardly fifty
years before the fine summer day when Flambeau and Father Brown found
themselves sitting in its gardens and drinking its beer. There had been
not a little of war and wild justice there within living memory, as soon
will be shown. But in merely looking at it one could not dismiss
that impression of childishness which is the most charming side of
Germany--those little pantomime, paternal monarchies in which a king
seems as domestic as a cook. The German soldiers by the innumerable
sentry-boxes looked strangely like German toys, and the clean-cut
battlements of the castle, gilded by the sunshine, looked the more
like the gilt gingerbread. For it was brilliant weather. The sky was
as Prussian a blue as Potsdam itself could require, but it was yet more
like that lavish and glowing use of the colour which a child extracts
from a shilling paint-box. Even the grey-ribbed trees looked young, for
the pointed buds on them were still pink, and in a pattern against the
strong blue looked like innumerable childish figures.

Despite his prosaic appearance and generally practical walk of life,
Father Brown was not without a certain streak of romance in his
composition, though he generally kept his daydreams to himself, as many
children do. Amid the brisk, bright colours of such a day, and in the
heraldic framework of such a town, he did feel rather as if he had
entered a fairy tale. He took a childish pleasure, as a younger brother
might, in the formidable sword-stick which Flambeau always flung as he
walked, and which now stood upright beside his tall mug of Munich. Nay,
in his sleepy irresponsibility, he even found himself eyeing the knobbed
and clumsy head of his