“That I know, and why you should take so long to say it I can’t understand.  It appears to me, young gentleman,” said Munro, with most cool and delightful effrontery, “that I can set all these matters right.  I can show you to be under a mistake; for I happen to know that, at the very time of which you speak, we were both of us up in the Chestatee fork, looking for a runaway slave—­you know the fellow, boys—­Black Tom—­who has been out for six months and more, and of whom I got information a few weeks ago.  Well, as everybody knows, the Chestatee fork is at least twenty miles from the Catcheta pass; and if we were in one place, we could not, I am disposed to think, very well be in another.”

“An alibi, clearly established,” was the remark of Counsellor Pippin, who now, peering over the shoulders of the youth, exhibited his face for the first time during the controversies of the day.  Pippin was universally known to be possessed of an admirable scent for finding out a danger when it is well over, and when the spoils, and not the toils, of the field are to be reaped.  His appearance at this moment had the effect of arousing, in some sort, the depressed spirits of those around him, by recalling to memory and into exercise the jests upon his infirmities, which long use had made legitimate and habitual.  Calculating the probable effect of such a joke, Munro, without seeming to observe the interruption, looking significantly round among the assembly, went on to say—­

“If you have been thus assaulted, young man, and I am not disposed to say it is not as you assert, it can not have been by any of our village, unless it be that Counsellor Pippin and his fellow Hob were the persons:  they were down, now I recollect, at the Catcheta pass, somewhere about the time; and I’ve long suspected Pippin to be more dangerous than people think him.”

“I deny it all—­I deny it.  It’s not true, young man.  It’s not true, my friends; don’t believe a word of it.  Now, Munro, how can you speak so?  Hob—­Hob—­Hob—­I say—­where the devil are you?  Hob—­say, you rascal, was I within five miles of the Catcheta pass to-day?” The negro, a black of the sootiest complexion, now advanced:—­

“No, maussa.”

“Was I yesterday?”

The negro put his finger to his forehead, and the lawyer began to fret at this indication of thought, and, as it promised to continue, exclaimed—­

“Speak, you rascal, speak out; you know well enough without reflecting.”  The slave cautiously responded—­

“If maussa want to be dere, maussa dere—­no ’casion for ax Hob.”

“You black rascal, you know well enough I was not there—­that I was not within five miles of the spot, either to-day, yesterday, or for ten days back!”

“Berry true, maussa; if you no dere, you no dere.  Hob nebber say one ting when maussa say ’noder.”