"A pretty officer of His Majesty's army, you are, Lieutenant Barlow! First a slip of a girl shows herself your superior with the sword and wounds you, then a single man wipes up the floor of a house with you and your guard, depriving you at the same time of both vision and memory, so that you cannot even describe your assailant!"
"He was dressed like a priest," muttered Barlow, evidently frightened at his commander's scathing comment. "That was all there was to see."
"A priest! Some of the men say the devil. I wonder—" Hamilton hesitated and looked at the floor.
"This Father Beret, he is too old for such a thing, isn't he?"
"I have thought of him—it was like him—but he is, as you say, very old to be so tremendously strong and active. Why, I tell you that men went from his hands against the walls and floor as if shot out of a mortar. It was the strangest and most astounding thing I ever heard of."
A little later Barlow seized a favorable opportunity and withdrew. The conversation was not to his liking.
Hamilton sent for Father Beret and had a long talk with him, but the old man looked so childishly inoffensive in spirit and so collapsed physically that it seemed worse than foolishness to accuse him of the exploit over which the entire garrison was wondering. Farnsworth sat by during the interview. He looked the good priest curiously and critically over from head to foot, remembering, but not mentioning, the most unclerical punch in the side received from that energetic right arm now lying so flabbily across the old man's lap.
When the talk ended and Father Beret humbly took his leave, Hamilton turned to Farnsworth and said:
"What do you think of this affair? I have cross-questioned all the men who took part in it, and every one of them says simply priest or devil. I think old Beret is both; but plainly he couldn't hurt a chicken, you can see that at a glance."
Farnsworth smiled, rubbing his side reminiscently; but he shook his head.