“Did—­did you steal those things?” stammered Mr. Audley, with staring eyes.

“If I did,” said the cleric pleasantly, “at least I am bringing them back again.”

“But you didn’t,” said Colonel Pound, still staring at the broken window.

“To make a clean breast of it, I didn’t,” said the other, with some humour.  And he seated himself quite gravely on a stool.  “But you know who did,” said the, colonel.

“I don’t know his real name,” said the priest placidly, “but I know something of his fighting weight, and a great deal about his spiritual difficulties.  I formed the physical estimate when he was trying to throttle me, and the moral estimate when he repented.”

“Oh, I say—­repented!” cried young Chester, with a sort of crow of laughter.

Father Brown got to his feet, putting his hands behind him.  “Odd, isn’t it,” he said, “that a thief and a vagabond should repent, when so many who are rich and secure remain hard and frivolous, and without fruit for God or man?  But there, if you will excuse me, you trespass a little upon my province.  If you doubt the penitence as a practical fact, there are your knives and forks.  You are The Twelve True Fishers, and there are all your silver fish.  But He has made me a fisher of men.”

“Did you catch this man?” asked the colonel, frowning.

Father Brown looked him full in his frowning face.  “Yes,” he said, “I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.”

There was a long silence.  All the other men present drifted away to carry the recovered silver to their comrades, or to consult the proprietor about the queer condition of affairs.  But the grim-faced colonel still sat sideways on the counter, swinging his long, lank legs and biting his dark moustache.

At last he said quietly to the priest:  “He must have been a clever fellow, but I think I know a cleverer.”

“He was a clever fellow,” answered the other, “but I am not quite sure of what other you mean.”

“I mean you,” said the colonel, with a short laugh.  “I don’t want to get the fellow jailed; make yourself easy about that.  But I’d give a good many silver forks to know exactly how you fell into this affair, and how you got the stuff out of him.  I reckon you’re the most up-to-date devil of the present company.”

Father Brown seemed rather to like the saturnine candour of the soldier.  “Well,” he said, smiling, “I mustn’t tell you anything of the man’s identity, or his own story, of course; but there’s no particular reason why I shouldn’t tell you of the mere outside facts which I found out for myself.”

He hopped over the barrier with unexpected activity, and sat beside Colonel Pound, kicking his short legs like a little boy on a gate.  He began to tell the story as easily as if he were telling it to an old friend by a Christmas fire.