The riddle was perhaps more easily solvable by an inveterate novelist than by the average member of the community. It was of a kind which Langholm had been concocting for many years.
"I suppose there is some secret," said he, taking a fresh grip of his stick, in sudden loathing of the living type which he had only imagined hitherto.
"Ah! You've hit it," purred the wretch.
"It is evident enough, and always has been, for that matter," said Langholm, coldly. "And so you know what his secret is!"
"I do, mister."
"And did Mr. Minchin?"
"He did."
"You would tell him, of course?"
The sort of scorn was too delicate for John William Abel, yet even he seemed to realize that an admission must be accompanied by some form of excuse.
"I did tell him," he said, "for I felt I owed it to him. He was a good friend to me, was Mr. Minchin; and neither of us was getting enough for all we did. That was what I felt; to have his own way, the boss'd ride roughshod over us both, and he himself only—but that's tellings again. You must wait a bit, mister! Mr. Minchin hadn't to wait so very long, because I thought we could make him listen to two of us, so one night I told him what I knew. You could ha' knocked him down with a feather. Nobody dreamt of it in New South Wales. No, there wasn't a hand on the place who would have thought it o' the boss! Well, he was fond of Minchin, treated him like a son, and perhaps he wasn't such a good son as he might have been. But when he told the boss what I told him, and made the suggestion that I thought would come best from a gent like him—"