Our city, for a week past, has been thrown into a state of intense excitement by the appearance of two prowling villains, named Hughes and Knight, from Macon, Georgia, for the purpose of seizing William and Ellen Craft, under the infernal Fugitive Slave Bill, and carrying them back to the hell of Slavery.  Since the day of ’76, there has not been such a popular demonstration on the side of human freedom in this region.  The humane and patriotic contagion has infected all classes.  Scarcely any other subject has been talked about in the streets, or in the social circle.  On Thursday, of last week, warrants for the arrest of William and Ellen were issued by Judge Levi Woodbury, but no officer has yet been found ready or bold enough to serve them.  In the meantime, the Vigilance Committee, appointed at the Faneuil Hall meeting, has not been idle.  Their number has been increased to upwards of a hundred “good men and true,” including some thirty or forty members of the bar; and they have been in constant session, devising every legal method to baffle the pursuing bloodhounds, and relieve the city of their hateful presence.  On Saturday placards were posted up in all directions, announcing the arrival of these slave-hunters, and describing their persons.  On the same day, Hughes and Knight were arrested on the charge of slander against William Craft.  The Chronotype says, the damages being laid at $10,000; bail was demanded in the same sum, and was promptly furnished.  By whom? is the question.  An immense crowd was assembled in front of the Sheriff’s office, while the bail matter was being arranged.  The reporters were not admitted.  It was only known that Watson Freeman, Esq., who once declared his readiness to hang any number of negroes remarkably cheap, came in, saying that the arrest was a shame, all a humbug, the trick of the damned abolitionists, and proclaimed his readiness to stand bail.  John H. Pearson was also sent for, and came—­the same John H. Pearson, merchant and Southern packet agent, who immortalized himself by sending back, on the 10th of September, 1846, in the bark Niagara, a poor fugitive slave, who came secreted in the brig Ottoman, from New Orleans—­being himself judge, jury and executioner, to consign a fellow-being to a life of bondage—­in obedience to the law of a slave State, and in violation of the law of his own.  This same John H. Pearson, not contented with his previous infamy, was on hand.  There is a story that the slave-hunters have been his table-guests also, and whether he bailed them or not, we don’t know.  What we know is, that soon after Pearson came out from the back room, where he and Knight and the Sheriff had been closeted, the Sheriff said that Knight was bailed—­he would not say by whom.  Knight being looked after, was not to be found.  He had slipped out through a back door, and thus cheated the crowd of the pleasure of greeting him—­possibly with that rough and ready affection which Barclay’s