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The Ghost of Gideon Wise shop-boy shocked to feel that for the first time you'd stolen money. Would you immediately reflect that your action was the same as that of Barabbas? Suppose you'd killed a child in some ghastly anger. Would you go back through history, till you could identify your action with that of an Idumean potentate named Herod? Believe me, our own crimes are far too hideously private and prosaic to make our first thoughts turn towards historical parallels, however apt. And why did he go out of his way to say he would not give his colleagues away? Even in saying so, he was giving them away. Nobody had asked him so far to give away anything or anybody. No; I don't think he was genuine, and I wouldn't give him absolution. A nice state of things, if people started getting absolved for what they hadn't done." And Father Brown, his head turned away, looked steadily out to sea.

"But I don't understand what you're driving at," cried Byrne. "What's the good of buzzing round him with suspicions when he's pardoned? He's out of it anyhow. He's quite safe."

Father Brown spun round like a teetotum and caught his friend by the coat with unexpected and inexplicable excitement.

"That's it," he cried emphatically. "Freeze on to that! He's quite safe. He's out of it. That's why he's the key of the whole puzzle."