cation lay back, dimly, among the
intuitions about human nature which are part of the attribute I
have quoted. I may shortly say that it was justified; another day's
attendance at the Elgin Courthouse shall not be compulsory here,
whatever it may have been there. Young Ormiston's commercial probity
is really no special concern of ours; the thing which does matter, and
considerably, is the special quality which Lorne Murchison brought to
the task of its vindication, the quality that made new and striking
appeal, through every channel of the great occasion, to those who heard
him. It was that which reinforced and comforted every friend Ormiston
had in the courtroom, before Lorne proceeded either to deal with the
evidence of the other side, or to produce any jot or tittle of his own;
and it was that which affected his distinguished opponent to the special
interest which afterward showed itself so pleasantly superior to the
sting of defeat. The fact that the defence was quite as extraordinarily
indebted to circumstantial evidence as the prosecution in no way
detracted from the character of Lorne's personal triumph; rather,
indeed, in the popular view and Rawlins's, enhanced it. There was in
it the primitive joy of seeing a ruffian knocked down with his own
illegitimate weapons, from the moment the dropped formula was proved to
be an old superseded one, and unexpected indication was produced that
Ormiston's room, as well as the bank vault, had been entered the night
of the robbery, to the more glorious excitement of establishing Miss
Belton's connection--not to be quoted--with a cracksman at that moment
being diligently inquired for by the New York police with reference to
a dramatically bigger matter. You saw the plot at once as he constructed
it; the pipe ash became explicable in the seduction of Miss Belton's
charms. The cunning net unwove itself, delicately and deliberately, to
tangle round the lady. There was in it that superiority in the art of
legerdemain, of mere calm, astonishing manipulation, so applauded in
regions where romance has not yet been quite trampled down by reason.
Lorne scored; he scored in face of probability, expectation, fact; it
was the very climax and coruscation of score. He scored not only by the
cards he held but by the beautiful way he played them, if one may say
so. His nature came into this, his gravity and gentleness, his sympathy,
his young angry irony. To mention just one thing, there was t