"Is this the amice of the friar you saw issue from the copse?" asked Ludwig, holding up a patched amice such as is worn by the Capuchin friars.
"The very same, I'll swear to it."
"Take care, you are on your oath."
"Well, if it is not the same, it is one made after the same fashion, patch and all complete. I'll swear to the shape of the patch, for I observed the garment well."
"Enough; you may retire. Call in Hans Schultz."
A dapper little man with oiled hair and closely-shaven face entered the court, and having taken his post at the witness-box, gave his evidence as follows:—
"I am by profession a barber. The morning after the murder I was shaving an elderly gentleman in my shop. I suggested that a little hair dye would improve his personal appearance, and offered him a bottle. He refused to buy it, so I placed it on a table behind me, and continued to shave him. Whilst I was recommending the hair dye to my customer I noticed a Capuchin friar pass several times in front of my shop. He appeared to be listening to our conversation.
"Shortly afterwards he entered the shop and begged for alms for the convent. I gave him a kreuzer, and after he had chatted a little he left the shop. I could not see his face well, as he kept it covered with his hood, but I remember that he had a red beard. He had hardly left my shop when on looking on the table behind me I found the bottle of hair dye gone. No one else but the friar and my customer had entered the shop since I laid the bottle down upon the table, yet I could not suspect my customer of having stolen the bottle, and I was much at a loss to conceive what a Capuchin friar should want with hair dye.
"I concluded, therefore, that I must have been mistaken, and must have laid the bottle down somewhere else without thinking, so I thought no more of it.
"On the same day I was called to cut the hair of a gentleman at the other end of the village, when I passed a friar who appeared to be the same as he who not long ago had entered my shop. I looked at him in the face, but he had a black beard. I could have sworn it was the same, for his amice was patched in a peculiar manner on the shoulder, as was that of the first friar."