at the wicket.

"You really prefer not to come in?"

There was a sly restrained humor in Langholm's tone.

"I do--and don't be long."

"Oh, no, I shan't be a minute."

There were other lights in the other cottage. It was not at all late. A
warm parallelogram appeared and disappeared as Langholm opened his door
and went in. Was it a sound of bolts and bars that followed? Abel was
still wondering when his prospective paymaster threw up the window and
reappeared across the sill.

"It was a three-figured check you had from Mr. Steel, was it?"

"Yes--yes--but not so loud!"

"And then he sent you to the devil to do your worst?"

"That's your way of putting it."

"I do the same--without the check."

And the window shut with a slam, the hasp was fastened, and the blind
pulled down.

CHAPTER XXVI

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. The nature of the secret mattered
nothing in the meanwhile. Here was the motive, without which the case
against John Buchanan Steel must have remained incomplete. Langholm
added it to his notes--and trembled!

He had compunction enough about the major triumph which now seemed in
certain store for him; the larger it loomed, the less triumphant and the
more tragic was its promise. And, with all human perversity, an
unforeseen and quite involuntary sympathy with Steel was the last
complication in Langholm's mind.

He had to think of Rachel in order to harden his heart against her
husband; and that ground was the most dangerous of all. It was strange
to Langholm to battle against _that_ by the bedside of a weaker brother
fallen in the same fight. Yet it was there he spent the night. He had
scarcely slept