to the accusation, in language and a manner alike fierce and unqualified. "Hear me!" was the exclamation of the youth--his voice rising in due effect, and illustrating well the words he uttered, and the purpose of his speech:--"I charge this born and branded villain with an attempt upon my life. He sought to rob and murder me at the Catcheta pass but a few days ago. Thrown between my horse's feet in the struggle, he received the brand of his hoof, which he now wears upon his cheek. There he stands, with the well-deserved mark upon him, and which, but for the appearance of his accomplices, I should have made of a yet deeper character. Let him deny it if he can or dare." The face of Rivers grew alternately pale and purple with passion, and he struggled in vain, for several minutes, to speak. The words came from him hoarsely and gratingly. Fortunately for him, Munro, whose cool villany nothing might well discompose, perceiving the necessity of speech for him who had none, interfered with the following inquiry, uttered in something like a tone of surprise. "And what say you to this accusation, Guy Rivers? Can you not find an answer?" "It is false--false as hell! and you know it, Munro, as well as myself. I never saw the boy until at your house." "That I know, and why you should take so long to say it I can't understand. It appears to me, young gentleman," said Munro, with most cool and delightful effrontery, "that I can set all these matters right. I can show you to be under a mistake; for I happen to know that, at the very time of which you speak, we were both of us up in the Chestatee fork, looking for a runaway slave--you know the fellow, boys--Black Tom--who has been _out_ for six months and more, and of whom I got information a few weeks ago. Well, as everybody knows, the Chestatee fork is at least twenty miles from the Catcheta pass; and if we were in one place, we could not, I am disposed to think, very well be in another." "An _alibi_, clearly established," was the remark of Counsellor Pippin, who now, peering over the shoulders of the youth, exhibited his face for the first time during the controversies of the day. Pippin was universally known to be possessed of an admirable scent for finding out a danger when it is well over, and when the spoils, and not the toils, of the field are to be reaped. His appearance at this moment had the effect of arousing, in some sort, the depressed spirits of those around him, by recalling to memory and into exercise the jests upon his infirmities, which long use had made legitimate and habitual. Calculating the probable effect of such a joke, Munro, without seeming to observe the interruption, looking significantly round among the assembly, went on to say--