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The Incredulity of Father Brown jeered the demagogue. "All right. Only you'll have to build a prison for a million men if you're going to jail all the poor people who had reason to hate Gid Wise. And you know it's God truth as well as I do."

Nares was silent; and nobody spoke until Elias interposed with his clear though faintly lisping drawl.

"This appears to me to be a highly unprofitable discussion on both sides," he said. "You have summoned us here either to ask us for information or to subject us to cross-examination. If you trust us, we tell you we have no information. If you distrust us, you must tell us of what we are accused, or have the politeness to keep the fact to yourselves. Nobody has been able to suggest the faintest trace of evidence connecting any one of us with these tragedies any more than with the murder of Julius Cæsar. You dare not arrest us, and you will not believe us. What is the good of our remaining here?"

And he rose, calmly buttoning his coat, his friends following his example. As they went towards the door, young Horne turned back and faced the investigators for a moment with his pale, fanatical face.

"I wish to say," he said, "that I went to a filthy jail during the whole war because I would not consent to kill a man."