“Hear me first, John Peters!” replied Woodburn, with the same determined manner as before. “I care not for your abusive epithets, and have only to say of them, that they are worthy of the source from which they proceed. But you have knowingly and wickedly defrauded me of my farm; unless I obtain redress, as I little expect, from a court which seems so easily to see merits in a rich man's claim. Yes, you have defrauded me, sir, out of my hard-earned farm; and there,” he continued, pointing to his gasping horse,--“there lies nearly half of all my remaining property--dead and gone! ay, and by your act, which, from signs I had previously noticed, and from the tones of that young lady's exclamation at the instant, (and God bless her for a heart which could be kind in such company,) I shall always believe was wilfully committed. And if I can make good my suspicions and a court of law will not give me justice, I will have it elsewhere! There, sir, go,” he added, relinquishing his hold on the horse, and stepping aside,--“go! but remember I claim a future reckoning at your hands!” The sleigh now passed on to the yard of the inn, where the company alighted, and soon disappeared within its doors, leaving the young man standing alone in the road, gazing after them with that moody and disquieted kind of countenance which usually settles on the face on the subsidence of a strong gust of passion. “Poor pony!” he at length muttered, sadly, as, rousing himself, he now turned towards his petted beast, that lay dead in his rude harness,--“poor pony! But there is no help for you now, nor for me either, I fear, as illy as I can afford to lose you. But it is not so much the loss, as the manner--the manner!” he repeated, bitterly, as he proceeded to undo the fastenings of the tackle, with the view of removing the carcass and the broken sleigh from the road. While he was thus engaged, a number of men, most of them his townsmen, who being, like himself, on their way to court, had stopped at the inn, or store, near by, where the noise of the fray had aroused them, now came hastening to the spot. “What is all this, Harry?” exclaimed the foremost, as he came up and threw a glance of surprise and concern on the ruins before him. “You can see for yourselves,” was his moody reply, as others now arrived, and, with inquiring looks, gathered around him. “Yes, yes; but how was it done?” “John Peters, who just drove up to the tavern, yonder, with a load of court gentry, run over me--that's all,” he answered, with an air that showed his feelings to be still too much irritated to be communicative.