o the boy. Only when Constable Malone came to me, and when
it was a matter of pleasing him and the sergeant, I didn't want to
be disobliging, for the sergeant is always a good friend of mine, and
Constable Malone is a young man I've a liking for. But as for wanting
to get rid of Jimmy! Why would I? Nobody'd grudge the bit the creature
would eat, and there's many a little turn he'd be doing for me about the
house."

Mr. Finnegan was hovering in the background, half hidden in the smoke
which filled the house. He felt that he ought to support his wife.

"What I said to the sergeant," he said, "no longer ago than last
Friday when I happened to be in town about a case I had on in the Petty
Sessions' Court--what I said to the sergeant was this: 'So long as the
boy isn't kept there too long, and so long as he's willing to go----'"

Jimmy, seated again on his low stool before the fire, looked up.

"Amn't I ready to go wherever I'm wanted?" he said.

"There you are now, doctor," said the sergeant. "You'll not refuse the
poor boy when he wants to go?"

"Sergeant," said Dr. Lovaway, "I can't, I really can't certify that boy
is a lunatic. I don't understand why you ask me to. It seems to me----"

Poor Lovaway was much agitated. It seemed to him that he had been
drawn into an infamous conspiracy against the liberty of a particularly
helpless human being.

"I don't think you ought to have asked me to come here," he said. "I
don't think you should have suggested---- It seems to me, sergeant, that
your conduct has been most reprehensible. I'm inclined to think I ought
to report the matter to--to----" Dr. Lovaway was not quite sure about
the proper place to which to send a report about the conduct of a
sergeant of the Irish Police. "To the proper authorities," he concluded
feebly.

"There, there," said the sergeant, soothingly, "we'll say no more about
the matter. I wouldn't like you to be vexed, doctor."

But Dr. Lovaway, having once begun to speak his mind, was not inclined
to stop.

"This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened," he said.
"You've asked me to certify lunacy in some very doubtful cases. I don't
understand your motives, but----"

"Well, well," said the sergeant, "there's no harm done anyway."

Mrs. Finnegan, like all good women, was anxious to keep the peace among
the men under her roof.

"Is the tea to your liking, doctor," she said, "or will I give you a
taste more sugar in it? I'm a grea