But, as if that was not immortality enough for one of my humble pretensions, the opposition instantly turned the tables upon their accusers. Witnesses stepped forward to prove that, on the night when I was seen for the last time, I had, in the bar-room of the first hotel in the village, publicly denounced the hurrah party, as being based upon deception and fraud, and avowed my determination not only instantly to leave it, but to go my death thenceforth in opposition. "See the bloody vindictiveness and malice of the hurrah party!" they cried; "before the sun rose upon this unfortunate and honest man--honest, because he deserted his party the moment his eyes were opened to its corruption--he was a living man no longer. The bravoes of this horrible gang of mid-night murderers, who have trampled on our rights and liberties, and now trample on our lives, met the unlucky patriot as he returned to his lowly cot, and--just Heavens!--where was he now, save in his bloody and untimely grave? he, the humble, the unoffending, the honest, the universally-esteemed, the widely-beloved, the patriotic Sheppard Lee!--waylaid and ambushed! killed, slain, murdered, massacred! the victim of a despotic and vindictive cabal,--the martyr of liberty, the--" In short, the noblest, honestest, dearest, best, and most ill-used creature that ever dabbled in the puddle of politics. One might suppose that this outcry of the antis, backed as it was by the full proof of my change of politics, would have stopped the mouths of the hurrah-boys. But it did no such thing; they only raved the louder. As for the proof of my backsliding, they treated that with contempt; proofs being as little regarded in politics as arguments. They accused the antis more zealously than before; and the antis recriminated with equal enthusiasm. There were some men in the village who strove to appease the ferment, by directing suspicion upon the German doctor, and divers other personages, just as the humour of suspicion seized them, furiously accusing these suspected individuals of having had some hand in the catastrophe. But the German doctor and the other persons accused had nothing to do with politics, and were therefore suffered to go their ways. It is a great protection to one's reputation to keep clear of politics. The guilt of my murder was left to be borne by the hurrah-boys and the antis, one party or the other; but as the evidence was equally strong against either party, and just as strong against any one individual of either party as another, it resulted that I was murdered not only by both parties, but by every man of both parties;--a peculiarity in my history that proved me to have possessed, though I never dreamed it before, a vaster number both of energetic friends and bloodthirsty enemies (each man being both friend and enemy) than any other man in the whole world.