-' 'If there's hell raised on the bed,' said
I, 'and I don't deny but there is, it's yourself riz it. The bed was
nice enough before you started on it. I had the sheets damped with the
stuff the doctor give me--'"

"Did you say that?" asked Meldon, pushing the punt a little nearer to
the shore.

"I did, and if he was mad before he was madder after. I offered to
fetch the doctor up to him, but he wouldn't listen to a word I said.
It was twelve o'clock and more before I got him quietened down, and I
wouldn't say he was what you'd call properly pacified then. He was
growling like a dog would when I left him, and saying he'd have it out
with me in the morning."

"I daresay," said Meldon, "he was worse after he got his breakfast."

"He was," said Doyle. "It was Sabina he got a hold of then; for,
thanks be to God, I was out in the yard seeing after the car that was
to drive him up to the liver. He went down into the kitchen after
Sabina, and he asked her what the devil she meant by upsetting one lamp
over his dinner and another over his breakfast. Sabina up and told him
straight to his face that it was you done it."

"What a liar that girl is!" said Meldon.

"J. J." said the Major, "did you do it?"

"No. I didn't. How could I possibly have been upsetting lamps in
Doyle's hotel when I was sitting in your house talking to you? Don't
lose your head, Major."

"Sabina told me after," said Doyle, "that it was by your orders she did
it."

"That's more like the truth," said Meldon. "If she'd confined herself
to that statement when she was talking to the judge, I shouldn't have
complained. I didn't exactly tell her that she was to upset the lamp,
but I did say that she was to flavour everything the judge got to eat
with paraffin oil."

"It's a queer thing that you'd do the like," said Doyle, "knowing well
all the time that no man would stay where he couldn't get a bite to
eat, and that I'd be losing three pounds a week by his going."

"If you understood the circumstances thoroughly," said Meldon, "you
would joyfully sacrifice not only three pounds, but if necessary thirty
pounds, a week to get rid of that judge."

"I would not," said Doyle confidently. "I wouldn't turn away any man
that was paying me, not if he was down here with orders from the
Government to put me in jail on account of some meeting that the League
would be having."

"Do you or do you not," said Meldon, "want to get rid of Simpkins?"