"No, you mistake,--it is as true as hell," promptly retorted the other; "or, rather, as true as there is one for such wretches as you. Mr. Phillips," he added, turning to the hunter, who stood a little in the background, with his rifle poised on his left arm, with an air of carelessness, but, as a close inspection would have shown, so grasped by his right hand, held down out of sight, as to enable him to bring it to an instant aim,--"Mr. Phillips, were you in the habit of going to Quebec, fall and spring, to dispose of your peltries, about the time of this plotted insurrection?" "I was." "Did you ever have the Canada leader I have spoken of pointed out to you, previous to the outbreak?" "Often, on going down the Chaudiere river, often; why, I knew him by sight as well as the devil knows his hogs!" "Did you afterwards see and identify him in this region?" "I did." "Is not, then, all I have stated true; and is not the prisoner, here, the man?" "All as true as the Gospel of St. Mark; and that _is_ the man, the very man; under the oath of God, I swear it!" During this brief but terribly pointed dialogue, Gaut Gurley,--whose handcuffs, on his complaint that they galled his wrists, had been removed after he came into court,--sat watching Phillips with that same singularly sinister expression which we have, on one or two previous occasions, tried to describe him as exhibiting. It was a certain indescribable, whitish, lurid light, flashing and quivering over his countenance, that made the beholder involuntarily recoil. And, as the last words were uttered, his hand was seen covertly stealing up under the lapel of his coat; but it was instantly arrested and dropped, at the sharp click of the cocking of the hunter's rifle, which was also seen stealing up to his shoulder. "Nonsense!" half audibly said the sheriff, to something which, during the bustle and sensation following these manifestations, the hunter had been whispering in his ear; "nonsense! I searched him myself, and _know_ there is nothing of the kind about him." "I am not so sure about that," responded the hunter, edging along through the crowd, with his eye still on the prisoner, and soon disappearing out of the door. This little judicial interlude in the remarks of the attorney being over, he resumed: