ore. "You've your trap with you, I
suppose?"

"I have, and I'll drive you of course, but I'll be expecting that
you'll do something when we get there the way the judge won't be
leaving the hotel altogether."

"You may put that out of your head at once," said Meldon, "for I'll do
nothing of the sort. I've already explained to you at some length that
my chief object at present is to chase away the judge, not only from
your hotel but from Ballymoy."

Doyle relapsed into a sulky silence. He did not speak again until he
and Meldon were half way into Ballymoy. Then he broke out suddenly.

"Any way," he said, "Sabina Gallagher won't spend another night under
my roof. She'll be off back to her mother as soon as ever she can get
her clothes packed. I'll give her a lesson that will cure her of
playing off tricks on the gentlemen that stops in my hotel."

"If you take that kind of revenge on Sabina," said Meldon, "you will be
doing an act of gross injustice for which you will be sorry up to the
day of your death."

"I will not, but I'll be serving her out the way she deserves."

"She has been acting all through," said Meldon, "in your interests,
though you can't see it; and you'll make a kind of dog Gelert of her if
you sack her now. You know all about the dog Gelert, I suppose, Doyle?"

"I do not," said Doyle, "and what's more I don't care if there was
fifty dogs in it. Sabina'll go. Dogs! What has dogs got to do with
Sabina and myself? It's not dogs I'm thinking of now."

"You evidently don't know anything about the dog I'm speaking of," said
Meldon. "He belonged to a Welsh king whose name at this moment I
forget. The king also happened to have a baby which slept, as many
babies do, in a cradle. You're listening to me, I suppose, Doyle?"

"I am not," said Doyle. "It's little good I, or any other body, would
get by listening to you. Sabina Gallagher listened to you, and look at
the way she is now. It's my belief that the less anybody listens to
you the better off he'll be."

"All the same, I expect you are listening," said Meldon. "In any case,
as I'm speaking distinctly, and you can't get away, you're bound to
hear, so I'll go on with the story. One day the king came in and found
the dog close to the cradle with his mouth all covered with blood. He
leaped to the conclusion that he'd eaten the baby."

"He was a damned fool if he thought that," said Doyle. "Who ever heard
of a dog eating a baby?"