flowing down the street. I thought you might be that
sort of man."

"I'm not."

"I'm glad to hear it. That sentry has been made a hero of. I've
frequently heard him mentioned in sermons as a person to be imitated.
In reality he was the worst kind of ass; and I wouldn't like to think
of your getting embalmed as he did, and being dug out afterwards by an
antiquary with a chisel. For the matter of that I shouldn't care to
hear of people writing odes about you on account of your going under
while your sword was in its sheath and your fingers held the pen."

"What was he doing with the pen?" said the Major. "If he was on sentry
duty--"

"It wasn't that sentry whose fingers held the pen, but brave
Kempenfelt, another man of the same sort; though there was more excuse
for him, because he seems to have been taken by surprise when the land
breeze shook the shrouds."

"I don't in the least know what you're talking about," said the Major.
"Is there a moving bog, or a high tide, or anything unusual?"

"There's something a great deal worse," said Meldon. "Did you hear
what Doyle said to me a few minutes ago?"

"I heard him asking for the loan of my car cushions. I don't
particularly want to lend them, but I shouldn't regard his getting them
as a catastrophe at all to be compared to the earthquake and all the
other things you were gassing about."

"The cushions in themselves are nothing, and less than nothing, but did
you hear who he wants them for?"

"Some judge or other, wasn't it? Salmon fishing."

"Some judge! What judge?"

"Did he mention his name? If he did I have forgotten it."

"He did mention it," said Meldon. "It was Hawkesby--Sir Gilbert
Hawkesby. Now do you see why I say that we are threatened with a
disaster worse than the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the fire and
brimstone that overwhelmed Sodom and Gomorrah?"

"No, I don't see anything of the sort. What on earth does the judge
matter to us?"

"Can you possibly be ignorant of the fact? No, you can't, for I told
it to you myself. Can you possibly have forgotten that Sir Gilbert
Hawkesby was the judge who tried Mrs. Lorimer for the murder of her
husband?"

"Oh!" said the Major, "I had forgotten. I never took the same interest
in that case that you did, J.J."

"Well, he was. He was the very judge who summed up so strongly against
the poor woman. I suppose now it will hardly be necessary for me to
explain how his arrival at Doyle's h