the officers of justice were together, and the prisoner under their control. With these preliminary remarks, he would now proceed with the statement he had proposed. “This man,” continued the attorney (whom we will now report in the first person), “the man who stands here charged, and, in the minds of nine out of ten of all present, I fearlessly affirm, _justly_ charged, with a murder, to the deliberate atrocity of which scarce a parallel can be found in the world’s black catalogue of crime,--this man, I say, is a felon-refugee from British justice. “Many years ago,--as some here present may know, as a matter of history,--a secret and somewhat extended conspiracy to subvert the government of Lower Canada was seasonably discovered and crushed at Quebec, which was its principal seat, and which, according to the plan of the conspirators, was to be the first object of assault and seizure. This was to be effected by the contemporaneous rising of a strong force within the city, headed by a bold adventurer, a bankrupt merchant from Rhode Island, and of an army of raftsmen, collected from the rivers, without, led on by a reckless and daring, half-Scotch, half-Indian Canadian, who had acquired great influence over that restless and ruffian class of men. The former had been in the province in the year before, and, from witnessing the popular disaffection then rampant from the enforcement of an odious act of their Parliament to compel the building of roads, had, with the instigation of such desperate fellows as the latter, his Canadian accomplice, conceived this plot, and had now come on, with a small band of recruits, to carry it into execution; when, as all was nearly ripe for the outbreak, the whole plot was discovered. The poor Yankee leader was seized, tried for high treason, condemned to death, and strung up by the neck from the walls of Quebec.[5] But the more wary and fortunate Canadian leader, though tenfold more guilty, escaped into the wilderness, this side of the British line; lingered a year or two in this region, trapping and robbing the Indians; then took to smuggling; engaged in the service of the man whose murder we are now investigating, followed him to the city, nearly ruined him there, and then dogged him to this settlement to complete his destruction.” “Who do you mean?” thundered Gaut Gurley. “Ask your own conscience,” replied the attorney, fearlessly confronting the prisoner. “’Tis false as hell!” rejoined Gaut, with a countenance convulsed with rage.