When Bart arose to reply, he seemed to stand a foot taller than he ever appeared before.  Calmly and in a suppressed voice he restated his case, and, with a few well—­directed blows, demolished the legal aspects of the defence.  He then turned upon his opponent; no restraint was on him now.  He did not descend to his level, but cut and thrust and flayed him from above.  Even the Newbury mob could now see the difference between wit and vulgarity, and were made to understand that coarseness and abuse were not strength.  His address to the court was superb; and when he finally turned to the jury, with a touching sketch of the helplessness of the plaintiff, and of the lawless violence of the defendants, who had long been a nuisance, and had now become dangerous to peace and good order, and submitted the case, the crowd looked and heard with open-mouthed wonder.  Had a little summer cloud come down, with thunder, lightning and tempest, they would not have been more amazed.  When he ceased, a murmur, which ran into applause, broke from the cool, acute, observing and thinking New Englanders and their children, who were present.

Judge Markham promptly repressed the disorder, and in a few words gave the case to the jury, who at once returned a verdict for the largest amount within the court’s jurisdiction; judgment was promptly rendered, execution for the bodies of the defendants issued, and they were arrested.

The excitement had now become intense.  Here were half a score of young men in the hands of the law, under orders to be committed to jail.  No one remembered such a case in Newbury.  Breaches of the law, in that usually orderly community, were unknown, until the acts which gave rise to this suit, and some fainter demonstrations of the same character.  The poor youths and their friends gathered helpless and anxious about Brace, who could suggest nothing.  Finally, Barton came forward, and offered to take the promissory notes of the parties and their fathers, for the amount of the judgment and costs, and release them from arrest, which offer they gladly accepted, with many thanks to their prosecutor; and the blow which he thus dealt was the end of disorder in Newbury.

For the time being Cole was left at peace, and enjoyed more consideration than had ever been conceded to him before.  He was destined, however, not long after, to appear in the higher court, to defend the doubtful title of his property, as will appear in the progress of this narrative.

As a general rule, the people of new communities are more curious and interested in law—­suits, and trials, and lawyers, than in almost anything else to which their attention can be called.  Lawyers, especially, are the objects of their admiration and astonishment.  Unaccustomed to mental labor, conscious of an inability to perform it, and justly regarding it as holding the first place in human effort, the power and skill to conduct and maintain a long-continued