Capt. Bell’s curiosity was as great as his disappointment at the turn things had taken. He did not know what had caused it, but suspected that the presence of the gentleman walking on the porch had something, if not everything, to do with it. This gentleman had only stopped for dinner, and left immediately after it was over, without alluding to the Jackson incident. Indeed, no one then knew whether or not he knew who Jackson was; but Capt. Bell, during the hour or so that he remained, learned what afterward proved to be three important facts--the name of the gentleman, that he was from North Carolina, and that he was on his way to Kentucky. At that time, the thoroughfare from all East Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia was by way of Bean’s Station through Cumberland Gap to Kentucky. Some months later, Capt. Bell learned that the gentleman in question was one of President Jackson’s most bitter and unrelenting enemies; that he was in fact the leader of the opposition to Jackson in North Carolina; that he had made public speeches in North Carolina and elsewhere against him, in the campaigns of 1824 and 1828, and was then (1832) most active in his opposition; and that he was at that time probably on his way to Kentucky to consult with Jackson’s opponents in that state. He, as Bell afterwards learned, had rehashed in his public speeches all the slanders which had been invented against Jackson, including no doubt the one which had cost Dickinson his life in 1806. After learning these facts, Capt. Bell said that he well knew the terrific struggle which Jackson had then and there, to control the storm rising within his breast as he saw, within a few yards of him, a hated foe who had committed a crime which, in Jackson’s judgment, ought to bar him out of heaven. But Bell’s idea was that Jackson--the man with a temper like a tornado, and whose very nature, as some professed to believe, was nothing but a raging torrent of fury--said to himself, “I am President of the United States; and I can not afford to bring reproach upon the people who elected me, or to degrade the highest office on earth by a scene, or a difficulty with that man, which is certain to follow if I stop here”; and he therefore immediately got into his carriage, and left without any explanation except the words given above. When Capt. Bell met Jackson again, a few years afterward, no explanation was necessary--he knew all. Capt. Bell’s son, who as a young man was present when the incident occurred, is authority for the account given above, and for his father’s views and recollections of it. So far as I know, it has not been published hitherto.