“You are charged with being accessory to the death of Mr. Barry Rutledge, sir,” said the other. “Barry Rutledge!--the Court-jester, the Castle-mimic, the tale-bearer of the Viceroy's household, the hireling scoffer at honest men, and the cringing supplicant of bad ones. The man who crushed such a reptile would have deserved well of his country, if it were not that the breed is too large to be extirpated.” “Take care what you say, Mr. Curtis,” said the other, respectfully; “your words may be used to your disadvantage.” “Take care what I say! Who are you speaking to, sirrah? Is the caution given to Joe Curtis? Is it to the man that has braved your power and laughed at your Acts of Parliament these fifty years? Are you going to teach me discretion now? Hark ye, my man, tell your employers not to puzzle their heads with plots and schemes about a conviction; they need neither bribe a witness, corrupt a judge, nor pack a jury. Familiar as such good actions are to them, their task will still be easier here. Tell them this; and tell them also that the score they must one day be prepared to settle would be lighter if Joe Curtis was the last man they had sent innocently to the scaffold.” As though he had disburdened his mind by this bitter speech, Curtis never again adverted to the dreadful accusation against him. He was committed to Newgate; and while treated with a certain deference to his position in life, he never relaxed in the stern and unbending resolve neither to accept any favor, nor even avail himself of the ordinary means of legal defence. “Prison diet and a straw mattress!” cried he; “such you cannot deny me; and they will be the extent of the favors I'll receive at your hands.” As the day fixed for the trial approached, the popular excitement rose to a high degree. Curtis was not a favorite even with his own party; his temper was sour, and his disposition unconciliatory; so that even by the Liberal press, his name was mentioned with little sympathy or regard. Besides this feeling, there was another, and a far more dangerous one, then abroad. The lower classes had been of late reflected on severely for the crimes which disgraced the county calendars, and the opportunity of retaliating against the gentry, by a case which involved one of their order, was not to be neglected. While, therefore, the daily papers accumulated a variety of strange and seemingly convincing circumstances, the street literature did not scruple to go further, and Curtis was the theme of many a ballad, wherein his guilt was depicted in all the glowing colors of verse.