h scare ideas about leagues
and boycotting. But it wasn't that at all. He thought he'd frighten
me off with stories about bad drains; said I'd be sure to die if I
stayed at the hotel. He was quite right there, I must say. I should
have died if I hadn't left at once."

"Were they very bad?"

"Were what very bad? Oh, the drains. Not at all. At least I daresay
they were bad enough. I wasn't there long enough to find out. But I
shouldn't have died of the drains in any case. I'm not the kind of man
who catches diseases."

Sir Gilbert's chest swelled a little as he spoke, and he slowly puffed
out a large cloud of smoke. He was justly proud of his physical
health, and was accustomed to hurl defiance at microbes and to heap
contempt on the doctor's art.

"I'm sure you're not," said Miss King dutifully.

"What I should have died of," said the judge, "if I had died, would
have been starvation. You'll hardly believe me when I tell you that
every scrap of food I got, even the boiled egg which I ordered for
breakfast, thinking it would be safe--"

Miss King had heard all about the paraffin oil before. She had indeed
heard about it more than once. She did not want to hear of it again,
because she feared that a repetition of the story might put her uncle
into another bad temper.

"I can't understand it," she said. "How any one could be so careless
as--"

"It wasn't carelessness," said the judge. "If it had been I might have
given the place another trial. It was done on purpose."

"Surely not."

"I pursued the cook," said the judge, "into the fastnesses of her
kitchen. She fled before me, but I ran her to earth at last in the
scullery. A filthier hole I never saw. I went for her straight, and
expected to be told a story about somebody or other upsetting a lamp
over all her pots and pans. Instead of that, she answered me, without
a sign of hesitation and said-- Now what do you think she said?"

"I can't guess. Not that she thought you'd like the flavour?"

"No. She hadn't quite the effrontery to say that. She told me that
Mr. Meldon, this parson of yours who takes you out yachting, had given
orders before I came that all my food was to be soaked with paraffin
oil."

"Oh! But that's too absurd."

"So you'd think. So I thought at the moment. I didn't believe her. I
thought that she was putting up an unusual line of defence to excuse
her own gross carelessness. But I was evidently wrong. Th