To you friendship is a tool and honour a convenience.

You cheat in every breath you draw.

And what a man gives you in his innocence may bring him to the gallows.

By God! I'd rather slit throats on a highway for a purse or two than cozen men to their death by such arts as yours." In other circumstances Mr.Lovel might have put up a brazen defence, but now he seemed to have lost assurance.

"I do no ill," was all he could stammer, "for I have no bias.