"Seymour Rereworth," then said Everope, as one who had meditated on what he was going to tell; "you see a lost and desperate man. I care for nothing. Nothing cares for me. I hardly know what has prompted me to this step. But this man endeavoured once to do me a service. And I returned it by entering the service of his deadly foe. But Michael Sinson has the devil's craft as well as his malice. His net was round me before I was aware. I struggled in the meshes, but they were too strong. One by one my feelings went to sleep. I was a slave, and did my work, and earned my wages. Ay, sir, till only the other day. Till that day when I asked him for a pittance, and he struck me to the ground. That was to be my payment for the future. The blow snapped all the cords of his net. Said he, that I was worthless? No offer he could make would buy my silence now. "You of course remember the late trial at Bodmin. You should have had me at your elbow, when you examined Michael Sinson. It was indeed he, who got up, or concocted the case for the plaintiff. I only know my own share in it. Can you imagine the temptation required to induce one who has been like me, to come and be sworn to tell the truth, with a falsehood ready framed upon his lips? You foresee what is coming. My story was learned by rote, well prepared, often rehearsed. I was armed at all points, furnished with answers to all questions. You know how I went through the ordeal. "Yet I was nearly overthrown. I never dreamed of the defendant as being in any manner known to me. Who was Randolph Trevethlan? What did I care about the stranger? What was his ruin to me, so I won my hire? After what I have said, you will not credit the emotion, with which, in answer to the question suggested by yourself, I saw Morton rise and confront me, and remembered that he had once offered me assistance, which might have saved me from the position I then occupied. "I quailed for a moment under his eye, but rallied immediately. I was not yet ready to avow my shame. But the memory of that moment has haunted me ever since. The idea that I had ruined him who might have averted my own fall, has rankled in my heart. I have stifled it in riot and delirium. But I had no longer the means. Sinson, my employer, reduced his scanty dole, and urged me to hide myself in a foreign land. But, no; that was not to be the reward of service such as mine. If he could extort the means of indulgence from those whom his treachery had profited, so could I from him. It was on such an errand I was bent, when he told me contemptuously I was of no use to him, and in answer to his right name, struck me to the earth. The knaves fell out, and honest men may get their own.