The claimant came to Jones County in 1836, was indicted in that year, and his case was brought to trial in the Superior Court in April, 1837. A great deal of time was taken up in the investigation. More than one hundred and thirty witnesses were examined. Ninety-eight, the majority of these being disinterested persons, declared that they believed the claimant to be an impostor. More than forty disinterested persons declared under oath that they believed the claimant to be Jesse L. Bunkley, and the majority of these last witnesses had known Bunkley long and intimately. The efforts of the prosecution were directed to showing that the man claiming to be Jesse Bunkley was in reality Elijah Barber, who in 1824-25 was a wagoner who hauled lumber from Grace's Mill near Macon, who was also known in Upson County, and who had served in the Florida war. Some of the witnesses who had never known Bunkley recognized the claimant as a man who had called himself Barber. Some of the witnesses who had known Jesse from his boyhood testified that they recognized the claimant as Bunkley on sight. Bunkley had various scars on his face, neck, and body. The claimant exhibited all these to the jury. One of the witnesses remembered that Bunkley bore the marks of a snake bite on one of his legs. The claimant immediately showed these marks. Hundreds of questions had been put to the claimant to test his memory. A great many he answered correctly, a great many others he failed to answer; but his replies to all vital questions were wonderfully clear and satisfactory. The jury was out but a short time before it returned, bringing in a verdict of guilty; and the claimant was sentenced to the penitentiary, where he served out his term. [Illustration: The Bunkley Trial 245] This verdict and sentence settled the case in law, but it remained as unsettled as ever in the public mind. The writer of this has heard it discussed on more than one occasion among old ladies and gentlemen who knew Bunkley, and who saw the claimant; and, without exception, they declared that the verdict of the jury was cruelly unjust. And yet, if any wrong was done, Bunkley himself was to blame for it. Being a young man of fortune and of the fairest prospects, he owed it to himself, his family, his friends, and to society at large, to become a good citizen, so that his ample means might be properly employed. Instead of that, he became a rowdy and a rioter, spending his days and his nights in evil company and in dissipation. If the claimant in this mysterious case was really Jesse Bunkley, it may be said of him that his sins had found him out. GEORGIA WIT AND HUMOR.