"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 which I haven't mentioned. You ought to have; you perfectly well might have guessed it. But as you haven't, I'll tell it to you. When I first heard of your coming to Ballymoy, I didn't know that you were Miss King's uncle. I only found that out yesterday." "That makes things worse than ever," said the judge. "I was beginning dimly to understand some of your actions before you told me that. Now I'm utterly and completely at sea. Why you should have tried to stop me coming to Ballymoy if you didn't know I was Miss King's uncle is beyond me altogether."