"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." "Is this the amice that the friar wore?" asked Engstein, holding up the patched garment. "It is like it. I could all but swear to it." "Did you address him when you met him, as you thought, a second time?" "I was about to do so, but he pulled out his beads, and began counting them. Not liking to disturb him in his devotions, I passed on, thinking that after all I might have been deceived." "That is sufficient, you may go." The little barber left the court, and another witness was called for. "Your name?" "Max Offenbrunnen." "Profession?" "I am host of the Bear Inn in the village of M----." "Can you tell us anything that happened at your inn within this last week?" "Yes; three days after the murder a Capuchin friar stopped at my inn and called for a tankard of beer. He kept his hood down all the time, so that I could not see his face, but I remember that he had a black beard, and I also noticed that he had a patch in his amice over one shoulder of rather an unusual form." The patched garment was held up again in court, and recognised also by the third witness, after which he proceeded as follows:-- "He called for more beer, and I began to enter into conversation with him and asked him where he came from. He told me from a Capuchin convent at W----, about a mile off. Just at that moment another friar, an old friend of mine, passed my inn, who belonged to the aforementioned convent.