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?"
"You are listening to me," said Meldon. "I thought you would when the
story began to get interesting. And you're perfectly right. The king
was a fool. He was such a fool that he killed the dog. Afterwards it
turned out that the dog had really been behaving in the most noble way
possible--had, in fact, been fighting a wolf which wanted to eat the
baby. Then the king was sorry, frightfully sorry, because he saw that
through his own hasty and ill-considered action he had killed his best
friend, a friend who all along had been acting in his interests. You
see the point of that story, don't you? You'll be exactly in the
position of the king, and you'll suffer endless remorse just as he did
if you go and sack Sabina."
Doyle meditated on the story. It produced a certain effect on his
mind, for he said,--
"If so be it wasn't Sabina that put the paraffin oil into the judge's
dinner, but some other one coming in unbeknown to her, and Sabina maybe
doing her best to stop it, then of course there wouldn't be another
word said about it; though as soon as ever I found out who it was--"
"You mustn't push the parable to those extremes," said Meldon.
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