blackening trees and the dark violet distances. The glowing green
tint was just deep enough to pick out in points of crystal one or
two stars. All that was left of the daylight lay in a golden
glitter across the edge of Hampstead and that popular hollow which
is called the Vale of Health. The holiday makers who roam this
region had not wholly dispersed; a few couples sat shapelessly on
benches; and here and there a distant girl still shrieked in one
of the swings. The glory of heaven deepened and darkened around
the sublime vulgarity of man; and standing on the slope and looking
across the valley, Valentin beheld the thing which he sought.

Among the black and breaking groups in that distance was one
especially black which did not break--a group of two figures
clerically clad. Though they seemed as small as insects, Valentin
could see that one of them was much smaller than the other.
Though the other had a student's stoop and an inconspicuous manner,
he could see that the man was well over six feet high. He shut
his teeth and went forward, whirling his stick impatiently. By
the time he had substantially diminished the distance and
magnified the two black figures as in a vast microscope, he had
perceived something else; something which startled him, and yet
which he had somehow expected. Whoever was the tall priest, there
could be no doubt about the identity of the short one. It was his
friend of the Harwich train, the stumpy little cure of Essex whom
he had warned about his brown paper parcels.

Now, so far as this went, everything fitted in finally and
rationally enough. Valentin had learned by his inquiries that
morning that a Father Brown from Essex was bringing up a silver
cross with sapphires, a relic of considerable value, to show some