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The Arrow of Heaven with a mania about the cup, demanding it with threats and only killing after a struggle; both victims were thrown down just outside their houses. The objection to Wilton's way of doing it is that we shall never even hear Doom's side of the case."

"Oh, I've no patience with all this sentimental whitewashing of worthless, murderous blackguards," cried Wain, heatedly. "If Wilton croaked the criminal he did a jolly good day's work, and there's an end of it."

"Quite so, quite so," said his uncle, nodding vigorously.

Father Brown's face had a yet heavier gravity as he looked slowly round the semicircle of faces:

"Is that really what you all think?" he asked. Even as he did so he realized that he was an Englishman and an exile. He realized that he was among foreigners, even if he was among friends. Around that ring of foreigners ran a restless fire that was not native to his own breed; the fiercer spirit of the western nation that can rebel and lynch and, above all, combine. He knew that they had already combined.

"Well," said Father Brown, with a sigh, "I am to understand, then, that you do definitely condone this unfortunate man's crime, or act of private justice, or whatever you call it. In that case it will not hurt him if I tell you a little more about it."

He rose suddenly to his feet; and though they