“Ay, ay, lawyer, that’s the how, that’s the very thing itself.  Put it to the skunk, let him deny that if he can—­let him deny that his name is Jared Bunce—­that he hails from Connecticut—­that he is a shark, and a pirate, and a pestilence.  Let him deny that he is a cheat—­that he goes about with his notions and other rogueries—­that he doesn’t manufacture maple-seeds, and hickory nutmegs, and ground coffee made out of rotten rye.  Answer to that, Jared Bunce, you white-livered lizard.”

Thus did one of his accusers take up the thread of the discourse as concluded in part by the chairman.  Another and another followed with like speeches in the most rapid succession, until all was again confusion; and the voice of the lawyer, after a hundred ineffectual efforts at a hearing, degenerated into a fine squeak, and terminated at last in a violent fit of coughing, that fortunately succeeded in producing the degree of quiet around him to secure which his language had, singularly enough, entirely failed.  For a moment the company ceased its clamor, out of respect to the chairman’s cough; and, having cleared his throat with the contents of a tumbler of Monongahela which seemed to stand permanently full by his side, he recommenced the proceedings; the offender, in the meantime, standing mute and motionless, now almost stupified with terror, conscious of repeated offences, knowing perfectly the reckless spirit of those who judged him, and hopeless of escape from their hands, without, in the country phrase, the loss at least of “wing and tail feathers.”  The chairman with due gravity began:—­

“Jared Bunce—­is that your name?”

“Why, lawyer, I can’t deny that I have gone by that name, and I guess it’s the right name for me to go by, seeing that I was christened Jared, after old Uncle Jared Withers, that lives down at Dedham, in the state of Massachusetts.  He did promise to do something for me, seeing I was named after him, but he ha’n’t done nothing yet, no how.  Then the name of Bunce, you see, lawyer, I got from my father, his name being Bunce, too, I guess.”

“Well, Jared Bunce, answer to the point, and without circumlocution.  You have heard some of the charges against you.  Having taken them down in short-hand, I will repeat them.”

The pedler approached a few steps, advanced one leg, raised a hand to his ear, and put on all the external signs of devout attention, as the chairman proceeded in the long and curious array.

“First, then, it is charged against you, Bunce, by young Dick Jenkins, that stands over in front of you there, that somewhere between the fifteenth and twenty-third of June—­last June was a year—­you came by night to his plantation, he living at that time in De Kalb county; that you stopped the night with him, without charge, and in the morning you traded a clock to his wife for fifteen dollars, and that you had not been gone two days, before the said clock began to go whiz, whiz, whiz, and commenced striking, whizzing all the while, and never stopped till it had struck clear thirty-one, and since that time it will neither whiz, nor strike, nor do nothing.”