A CARDINAL POINT The irresistible discomfiture of this ruffian did not affect the value of the evidence which he had volunteered.

Langholm was glad to remember that he had volunteered it; the creature was well served for his spite and his cupidity; and the man of peace and letters, whose temperament shrank from contention of any kind, could not but congratulate himself upon an incidental triumph for which it was impossible to feel the smallest compunction.

Moreover, he had gained his point.

It was enough for him to know that there was a certain secret in Steel's life, upon which the wretch Abel had admittedly traded, even as his superior Minchin had apparently intended to do before him.

Only those two seemed to have been in this secret, and one of them still lived to reveal it when called upon with authority.