THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN
of the dentist! Such a simple, such a beautiful and peaceful thought! Friends, we have passed a night in hell; but now the sun is risen, the birds are singing, and the radiant form of the dentist consoles the world."
"I will get some sense out of this," cried Flambeau, striding forward, "if I use the tortures of the Inquisition."
Father Brown repressed what appeared to be a momentary disposition to dance on the now sunlit lawn and cried quite piteously, like a child, "Oh, let me be silly a little. You don't know how unhappy I have been. And now I know that there has been no deep sin in this business at all. Only a little lunacy, perhaps—and who minds that?"
He spun round once more, then faced them with gravity.
"This is not a story of crime," he said; "rather it is the story of a strange and crooked honesty. We are dealing with the one man on earth, perhaps, who has taken no more than his due. It is a study in the savage living logic that has been the religion of this race.
"That old local rhyme about the house of Glengyle—
"'As green sap to the simmer trees
Is red gold to the Ogilvies'—
was literal as well as metaphorical. It did not merely mean that the Glengyles sought for wealth;
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