And
somehow they knew subconsciously that the whole tale had taken a new
and terrible turn, when they saw the prince stand in the gap of the
gaunt trees, in his robes of angry crimson and with his lowering
face of bronze, bearing in his hand a new shape of death. They could
not have named a reason, but the two swords seemed indeed to have
become toy swords and the whole tale of them broken and tossed away
like a toy. Borodino looked like the Old World headsman, clad in
terrible red, and carrying the ax for the execution of the criminal.
And the criminal was not Crane.
Mr. Brain of the Indian police was glaring at the new object, and it
was a moment or two before he spoke, harshly and almost hoarsely.
"What are you doing with that?" he asked. "Seems to be a woodman's
chopper."
"A natural association of ideas," observed Horne Fisher. "If you
meet a cat in a wood you think it's a wildcat, though it may have
just strolled from the drawing-room sofa. As a matter of fact, I
happen to know that is not the woodman's chopper. It's the kitchen
chopper, or meat ax, or something like that, that somebody has
thrown away in the wood. I saw it in the kitchen myself when I was
getting the potato sacks with which I reconstructed a mediaeval
hermit.
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