d your mind, and came to the
conclusion that my presence here wasn't likely to interfere with your
friend's plans. Now will you tell me why--"

"I've made three distinct and separate efforts," said Meldon, "to
change the subject of conversation. I tried to start you off on
habits, a subject on which almost every man living can talk more or
less. I thought you'd have taken that opportunity of telling the story
about the horse which always stopped at the door of a certain public
house, even after the temperance reformer had bought him. I'm sure
you'd have liked to tell that story. Everybody does."

"I don't.".

"So it appears. You're an exceptional man. Recognising that, I
started the subject of words, which is more philosophical. You might
quite easily have got off on the degradation of the English language
owing to the spread of slang. Then we could have spent an agreeable
half-hour."

"But I didn't want to talk about words. I--"

"I saw that; so I gave you another chance. Starting on the annals of
your profession, I proposed a question to you which ought to have
aroused in you a desire to defend the public utility of the great legal
luminaries of the past. I practically denied that judges are any good
at all. Instead of showing me, as you very easily might have, that it
was the judges who created the public opinion which put a stop to
duelling, and not public opinion which goaded the judges on to hang the
duellists, you--"

"I wanted to know, and I still want to know, why you changed your mind."

"If you can't think that out for yourself," said Meldon, "I'm not going
to do it for you. A man like you ought to be able to follow a
perfectly simple line of thought like that. If you can't see the plain
and obvious mental process which led to my change of opinion, I don't
see how you can expect to track the obscure workings of the criminal
mind. The criminal, as of course you know, is always more or less
demented, and consequently doesn't reason in the obvious and
straightforward way in which I do. His mentality--"

"I suppose you're changing the conversation again," said the judge.

"I'm trying to; but it doesn't seem to be much use."

"I'll talk to you on any subject you choose to select with pleasure,"
said the judge, "if you'll tell me what it was that led to your change
of mind about my probable action in this matter of your friend's
proposal to marry my niece."

"There's just one fact whi