ale had taken a new
and terrible turn, when they saw the prince stand in the gap of the
gaunt trees, in his robes of angry crimson and with his lowering
face of bronze, bearing in his hand a new shape of death. They could
not have named a reason, but the two swords seemed indeed to have
become toy swords and the whole tale of them broken and tossed away
like a toy. Borodino looked like the Old World headsman, clad in
terrible red, and carrying the ax for the execution of the criminal.
And the criminal was not Crane.

Mr. Brain of the Indian police was glaring at the new object, and it
was a moment or two before he spoke, harshly and almost hoarsely.

"What are you doing with that?" he asked. "Seems to be a woodman's
chopper."

"A natural association of ideas," observed Horne Fisher. "If you
meet a cat in a wood you think it's a wildcat, though it may have
just strolled from the drawing-room sofa. As a matter of fact, I
happen to know that is not the woodman's chopper. It's the kitchen
chopper, or meat ax, or something like that, that somebody has
thrown away in the wood. I saw it in the kitchen myself when I was
getting the potato sacks with which I reconstructed a mediaeval
hermit."

"All the same, it is not without interest," remarked the prince,
holding out the instrument to Fisher, who took it and examined it
carefully. "A butcher's cleaver that has done butcher's work."

"It was certainly the instrument of the crime," assented Fisher, in
a low voice.

Brain was staring at the dull blue gleam of the ax head with fierce
and fascinated eyes. "I don't understand you," he said. "There is
no--there are no marks on it."

"It has shed no blood," answered Fisher, "but for all that it has
committed a crime. This is as near as the criminal came to the crime
when he committed it."

"What do you mean?"

"He was not there when he did it," explained Fisher. "It's a poor
sort of murderer who can't murder people when he isn't there."

"You seem to be talking merely for the sake of mystification," said
Brain. "If you have any practical advice to give you might as well
make it intelligible."

"The only practical advice I can suggest," said Fisher,
thoughtfully, "is a little research into local topography and
nomenclature. They say there used to be a Mr. Prior, who had a farm
in this neighborhood. I think some details about the domestic life
of the late Mr. Prior would throw a light on this terrible
business."

"