several of whom her ready purse and
well-stored medicine-chest had been useful in a time
of poverty or fever. So it fell out that I was
neither hanged nor cowhided, but merely dragged
in the centre of a noisy and menacing crowd to
the court-house; where, to use the expression
of the Honourable Sampson Petty, I was "given
up to justice."

Muddy, ragged, and exhausted, with torn
clothes and dishevelled hair, I must have
presented a wretched spectacle when put to the bar,
while the clamour of rny rude accusers filled all
minds with the very worst opinion of me. With
some trouble, order was restored, and a detailed
account of the transaction was rendered. The
forged notes were produced in court, and, being
examined by experts, were unanimously
pronounced to be "bogus," or counterfeits, though
admirably executed. They were quite plausible
enough in appearance to satisfy simple husbandmen,
and it was only on market-day, when a
number of them had been offered and refused
at the banks of the city, that the cheat was
detected.

Every face I looked round upon, was hostile
and unpitying. Even those who had few scruples
as to the morality of the transaction, evidently
scorned me as a clumsy tyro, and viewed me as
the Spartans did a convicted pilferer. I heard
one man mutter to his friend that I was a "raw
Britisher," and another remark that "'twar
a smart idea, but I had fixed it awkward."
However, though no one seemed to give the
slightest credit to my explanation of affairs,
the judge decided that, on technical grounds, I
must take my trial elsewhere than at Cincinnati.
None of the goods had been purchased in
the city; the fraud must be investigated and
punished at the following assize in the county
where the notes had been passed; and I must
be confined in Madison jail for the present.

To Madison I was accordingly removed, in
custody of the deputy-marshal and a party of
police. My escort had no easy work in
protecting me from injury during the passage from
the court to the steam-boat; I was pelted,
hustled, and threatened; and it was only by dint,
of much firmness and coaxing that the officers
cleared the way. Even on board the boat, I
was not free from persecution, for several of
the farmers were on their return to Madison,
where they resided, and among them Wormald,
who never lost sight of me until he saw me
thrust into the little wooden building on the
swampy bank of the river, which served the
township for a prison. His parting speech was
not of a reassuring character.

"Look'ee, my fine bird," said the old man,
giving a sounding slap with his hard hand
on the battered stock of his rifle; "I was
loth to vex Madam Pook yonder, but don't
think to get off without paying for what ye
done. Four-and-forty hogs, eighty bar'ls of
apples, two hundred sacks of wheat, hev I lost
by you, jest to be larfed at by your 'complices.
But onless the judges give you a good spell of
Penitentiary, I'll right myself with a ragged bit
of lead, Gospel sure! If you slip through the
lawyers' hands, I'll hev blood for them hogs, or
my given name is not Dan."

A very melancholy time did I pass in that
Madison prison; no one came to see me, no one
wrote to me; I seemed entirely cut off from
human sympathy. True, I was wholly innocent,
except of over-credulity, but that was only
known to myself, and I could not right myself.
All the profits of the affair had gone to my
treacherous employers; all the suffering was
mine. And it was a painful reflection that while
my reputation was torn to rags, my liberty
forfeit, and my life in peril, Hannibal Petter and
the others were chuckling over the folly of their
dupe as they divided the spoils. I grieved, too,
for the hard-handed Western farmers whom I
had unwittingly been the means of injuring,
roughly though they had treated me.

The officials of the jail supposed me to be a
rogue of the deepest dye, and gruffly requested
me to keep my "innocent palaver" for the assizes.
They refused me writing materials, and would
not carry messages for me, saying that I should
have plenty of time to consult a lawyer when
the time of my trial drew near. They were not
unkind in other respects; I was well fed, as is
commonly the case in that district of plenty, and
was even favoured with the loan of a couple of
old books, battered copies of some New
England magazine, bound up. I had some hopes
that I might be able to persuade the judges
of my being blameless in the fraudulent
business wherein I had been made a tool, but the
jury of rugged Western men—I shuddered
as I thought of their stubborn prejudices and
revengeful spirit. And even if I were acquitted,
I had no trifling ordeal to pass through. Judge
Lynch might rectify what he would think the
blunder of the legal courts; and Womald and
his rifle were no light make-weights to a verdict
of "Not guilty."

It was on the third evening of my imprisonment,
as I was sitting alone in my cell reading
the faded print of the old magazines by the
light of a primitive lamp—the work of some
travelling tinker, and whose huge smoky wick
was fed bv a quantity of melted tallow—that
I thought I heard the gnawing of a rat in the
wall behind me. An active and bold rat, too,
to tear with busy teeth so steadily and long.
The creature annoyed me, for my nerves were
irritable, and I tried to frighten it away by
knocking on the unplaned planks with the stool
on which I had been sitting. The gnawing
ceased, and I heard nothing but the wash and
murmur of the great river that flowed without.
But after the turnkey had brought me my supper
and had locked me in for the night, the rat
renewed his operations, though more cautiously,
and for a long time the rasping and scratching
continued.

It so happened that I had discovered a couple
of old letters, yellow with age, between two
leaves of my book, which had apparently been
pasted together at the edges, and in these
letters, ill-spelt and quaintly worded as they