"I have not been outside the monastery grounds since Napp's nephew arrived," Klacel told them, and certainly there was nothing on the soles of his feet to give any evidence to the contrary.

So, Brother Gregory and Brother Joseph spent the rest of the morning collecting mud and soil samples from around the grounds and from several locations north, east and south of the monastery. They placed each sample in a paper packet and labeled each as to where it had been collected.

When they returned from their final collecting trip they discovered several carriages at the door of the monastery, and the porter told them that the appointed members of Klacel's tribunal were meeting in the Abbot's rooms to try and work out how to proceed. "Very angry the Monsignor was," the porter confided, "he wants to start the trial right away. He's dead set on going after Brother Matthew, and he has asked Brother Timothy to help him."

Both the monks groaned. But then Mendel remembered that he had not asked the porter about his role in the discovery of the fire. "When did you see the smoke?" he asked.

"I didn't, at least not at first," was the reply. "My doorway faces away from the that part of the monastery. It was a passerby that saw it and told me about it."

"A passerby? What do you mean?" Mendel asked.

"Well," the porter admitted, "it was a bit strange really. I'd seen this gentleman hanging around all morning. He thought he was hidden, but every time something happened, like the carriages leaving, he would step out of the bushes, over there," he pointed to the recent location of Alois Pech, "write something in a book, and go back behind the bushes."

"How long had he been there?" Brother Joseph wanted to know.

"Couldn't rightly say," was the answer, "but at least all morning and most of the afternoon, until the fire started. I must have been resting," he coughed and looked away as he admitted his slight dereliction of duty, "because the next thing I know was that he was shaking me and pointing to the fire. That's when I went for help."

"What happened to the stranger?"

"Dunno', he just vanished. I never seen him again, before or since."

Acting on impulse, the two monks walked over to where the porter had seen Pech hiding. A few minutes search revealed the remains of the informer's lunch and a much trampled area of dried mud.

"Someone did indeed wait here for a long time," said Brother Gregory pointing to the many footprints that could still be seen in the dried ground. "He even brought some food, so he knew that he would be here some time."

"But why?" Lindenthal wanted to know. "Why would someone want to watch the monastery?"

"It is my guess that he was the saboteur," Brother Gregory replied, getting excited again. "He waited here until he could sneak into the monastery unobserved, which must have been sometime in the afternoon. Once inside he went to the guest room, set the fire, broke the beaker and then -- " his voice trailed off.

"He tells the porter all about it," said Lindenthal, finishing his friend's thought. "It seems a bit weak, why would he do that?"

"So the fire would not spread," Brother Gregory replied, reluctant to give up his theory. "He did not want to burn down the monastery, just destroy some of the conscription list."

"So he told the porter on his way out?" There was a certain amount of sarcasm in Lindenthal's voice as he said this.

"At least it's a testable theory," Brother Gregory snapped back and he bent down to take a series of mud samples from around Pech's footprints. "Let's take this mud back to my room and test it."

"Don't forget the lunch package," Brother Joseph laughed, "we might be able to get some teeth prints from the sandwiches!"