"Now let you and me walk a little together, and look at the Echinoid another day -- or when I return from Sevastopol--" Tom went out with him.

A new ray of hope had crossed the Major's mind.
His meeting with Thurnall might he providential; for he recollected now, for the first time, Mellot's parting hint.
"You knew Elsley Vavasour well ?" "No man better." "Did you think that there was any tendency to madness in him ?" "No more than in any other selfish, vain, irritable man, with a strong imagination left to run riot." "Humph! you seem to have divined his character.

May I ask you if you knew him before you met him at Aberalva ?" Tom looked up sharply in the Major's face.
"You would ask, what cause I have for inquiring?
I will tell you presently.

Meanwhile I may say, that Mellot told me frankly that you had some power over him; and mentioned, mysteriously, a name--John Briggs, I think--which it appears that he once assumed." "If Mellot thought fit to tell you anything, I may frankly tell you all.
John Briggs is his real name.

I have known him from childhood." And then Tom poured into the ears of the surprised and somewhat disgusted Major all he had to tell.
"You have kept your secret mercifully, and used it wisely, sir; and I and others shall be always your debtors for it.