I found a seat between the prisoner and the bench, so that I could hear and see the better. The Government prosecutor occupied a seat at a table to my right, between me and the three staring Gothic windows. When he rose from his chair his body came in silhouette against their light. With his goat-beard, beak-nose, heavy eyebrows, long, black hair resting on the back of his coat-collar, bent body, loose-jointed arms, his coat-tails swaying about his thin legs, he looked (I did not see him in any other light) like a hungry buzzard flapping his wings before taking flight. He opened the case with a statement of facts. He would prove, he said, that this mountain-ruffian was the terror of the neighborhood, in which life was none too safe; that although this was the first time he had been arrested, there were many other crimes which could be laid at his door, had his neighbors not been afraid to inform upon him. Warming up to the subject, flapping his arms aloft like a pair of wings, he recounted, with some dramatic fervor, what he called the "lonely ride of the tried servant of the Government over the rude passes of the mountains," recounting the risks which these faithful men ran; then he referred to the sanctity of the United States mails, reminding the jury and the audience--particularly the audience--of the chaos which would ensue if these sacred mail-bags were tampered with; "the stricken, tear-stained face of the mother," for instance, who had been waiting for days and weeks for news of her dying son, or "the anxious merchant brought to ruin for want of a remittance which was to tide him over some financial distress," neither of them knowing that at that very moment some highwayman like the prisoner "was fattening off the result of his theft." This last was uttered with a slapping of both hands on his thighs, his coat-tails swaying in unison. He then went on in a graver tone to recount the heavy penalties the Government imposed for violations of the laws made to protect this service and its agents, and wound up by assuring the jury of his entire confidence in their intelligence and integrity, knowing, as he did, how just would be their verdict, irrespective of the sympathy they might feel for one who had preferred "the hidden walks of crime to the broad open highway of an honest life." Altering his tone again and speaking in measured accents, he admitted that, although the Government's witnesses had not been able to identify the prisoner by his face, he having concealed himself in the bushes while the rifling of the pouch was in progress, yet so full a view was gotten of his enormous back and shoulders as to leave no doubt in his mind that the prisoner before them had committed the assault, since it would not be possible to find two such men, even in the mountains of Kentucky. As his first witness he would call the mail-carrier.