Kinsard experienced a sharp pang of dismay for Gwinnan’s sake. “And I suppose you are satisfied now,” he said, bitterly. “Oh, no, my dear little sir. I am not half satisfied!” cried Harshaw, with his liquid rotund laugh. His foreshortened shadow swayed on the blocks of white limestone as if it could scarcely contain itself for laughter. He had lost the poise which he had endured so much to maintain that day. He was intoxicated with his triumph; and indeed he could afford to indulge it, for he felt that there was nothing now at stake. “And that is the reason,” continued Harshaw, “that I feel I owe you an obligation which I must not let pass without acknowledgment. In your able and cogent speech this afternoon you did more to effect Judge Gwinnan’s impeachment than, unaided, I could possibly have compassed. Let me beg you to accept my thanks—ha! ha! ha!” Deeply wounded by this thrust, and conscious of the injury he had done Gwinnan’s interests, Kinsard turned upon him, but not without dignity. “Mr. Harshaw,” he said, “if I believed you to be sincere in this matter, if I thought you were not ingeniously perverting the facts and the law, I should most willingly coöperate with you. But I know your motives to be a rancorous jealousy and an insatiable spite. And if I have not done anything to nullify them, it is not because I am without the will.” He looked at his interlocutor from head to foot, as if he found a source of surprise in his very embodiment. “I cannot imagine how a soul so petty should be so corpulently lodged. It might appropriately animate some tiny writhing worm that, showing venom, could be crushed by a foot.” “Look here, youngster,” said Harshaw, sneering and showing his strong white teeth, his eyes gleaming under the brim of his hat, “I know you mean you’d take my life if you could defy the consequence. But you’d better mind how you go to extremes in Gwinnan’s service. I have a contempt for you, but a pity, too. I know you are only his miserable tool, his abject creature.” Kinsard sprang forward with the suddenness of a tiger. A stinging thrill ran through Harshaw’s face before he could realize that with an open palm he had been struck upon the cheek.