“Not a tittle, sir.  Evidence is scarcely necessary in a case like this, sir, where the state proves more than you can possibly disprove.  Your only hope, sir is to present a plausible conjecture to the jury.  Just set their fancies to work, and they have a taste most perfectly dramatic.  What you leave undone, they will do.  Where you exhibit a blank, they will supply the words wanting.  Only set them on trail, and they’ll tree the ’possum.  They are noble hands at it, and, as I now live and talk to you, sir, not one of them who heard the plausible story which I would have made out, but would have discovered more common sense and reason in it than in all the evidence you could possibly have given them.  Because, you see, I’d have given them a reason for everything.  Look, how I should have made out the story.  Mr. Colleton and Forrester are excellent friends, and both agree to travel together.  Well, they’re to meet at the forks by midnight.  In the meantime, Forrester goes to see his sweetheart, Kate Allen—­a smart girl, by the way, colonel, and well to look on.  Parting’s a very uncomfortable thing, now, and they don’t altogether like it.  Kate cries, and Forrester storms.  Well, must come comes at last.  They kiss, and are off—­different ways.  Well, grief’s but a dry companion, and to get rid of him, Forrester takes a drink; still grief holds on, and then he takes another and another, until grief gets off at last, but not before taking with him full half, and not the worst half either, of the poor fellow’s senses.  What then?  Why, then he swaggers and swears at everything, and particularly at your nephew, who, you see, not knowing his condition, swears at him for keeping him waiting—­”

“Ralph Colleton never swears, Mr. Pippin,” said the colonel, grimly.

“Well, well, if he didn’t swear then, he might very well have sworn, and I’ll be sworn but he did on that occasion; and it was very pardonable too.  Well, he swears at the drunken man, not knowing his condition, and the drunken man rolls and reels like a rowdy, and gives it to him back, and then they get at it.  Your nephew, who is a stout colt, buffets him well for a time, but Forrester, who is a mighty, powerful built fellow, he gets the better in the long run, and both come down together in the road.  Then Forrester, being uppermost, sticks his thumb into Master Colleton’s eye—­the left eye, I think, it was—­yes, the left eye it was—­and the next moment it would have been out, when your nephew, not liking it, whipped out his dirk, and, ’fore Forrester could say Jack Robinson, it was playing about in his ribs; and, then comes the hatchet part, just as I told it you before.”

“And is none of this truth?”

“God bless your soul, no!  Do you suppose, if it was the truth, it would have taken so long a time in telling?  I wouldn’t have wasted the breath on it.  The witnesses would have done that, if it were true; but in this was the beauty of my art, and had I been permitted to say to the jury what I’ve said to you, the young man would have been clear.  It wouldn’t have been gospel, but where’s the merit of a lawyer, if he can’t go through a bog?  This is one of the sweetest and most delightful features of the profession.  Sir, it is putting the wings of fiction to the lifeless and otherwise immovable body of the fact.”