ore and more, with
a quite unusual concentration of curiosity. "Don't think me rude. Let me
think this out for a moment."

"All right," said Flambeau, laughing, and finished his beer. A slight
breeze stirred the budding trees and blew up into the sky cloudlets of
white and pink that seemed to make the sky bluer and the whole coloured
scene more quaint. They might have been cherubs flying home to the
casements of a sort of celestial nursery. The oldest tower of the
castle, the Dragon Tower, stood up as grotesque as the ale-mug, but as
homely. Only beyond the tower glimmered the wood in which the man had
lain dead.

"What became of this Hedwig eventually?" asked the priest at last.

"She is married to General Schwartz," said Flambeau. "No doubt you've
heard of his career, which was rather romantic. He had distinguished
himself even, before his exploits at Sadowa and Gravelotte; in fact, he
rose from the ranks, which is very unusual even in the smallest of the
German..."

Father Brown sat up suddenly.

"Rose from the ranks!" he cried, and made a mouth as if to whistle.
"Well, well, what a queer story! What a queer way of killing a man;
but I suppose it was the only one possible. But to think of hate so
patient--"

"What do you mean?" demanded the other. "In what way did they kill the
man?"

"They killed him with the sash," said Brown carefully; and then, as
Flambeau protested: "Yes, yes, I know about the bullet. Perhaps I ought
to say he died of having a sash. I know it doesn't sound like having a
disease."

"I suppose," said Flambeau, "that you've got some notion in your head,
but it won't easily get the bullet out of his. As I explained before, he
might easily have been strangled. But he was shot. By whom? By what?"

"He was shot by his own orders," said the priest.

"You mean he committed suicide?"

"I didn't say by his own wish," replied Father Brown. "I said by his own
orders."

"Well, anyhow, what is your theory?"

Father Brown laughed. "I am only on my holiday," he said. "I haven't got
any theories. Only this place reminds me of fairy stories, and, if you
like, I'll tell you a story."

The little pink clouds, that looked rather like sweet-stuff, had floated
up to crown the turrets of the gilt gingerbread castle, and the pink
baby fingers of the budding trees seemed spreading and stretching to
reach them; the blue sky began to take a bright violet of evening, when
Father Brown suddenly spoke again