consult Justice Dolittle, my neighbour, and if Mr. Hare won’t settle with you, I will sue it for you.  Well, said Dennis, all I have to say is, that there is not so big a rogue as Hare on the whole river, save and except one scoundrel who shall be nameless, making a significant and humble bow to the Justice.  Here there was a general laugh throughout the Court—­Dennis retired to the next room to indemnify himself by another glass of grog, and venting his abuse against Hare and the Magistrate.  Disgusted at the gross partiality of the Justice, I also quitted the Court, fully concurring in the opinion, though not in the language, that Dennis was giving utterance to in the bar room.

Pettifog owed his elevation to his interest at an election.  It is to be hoped that his subsequent merits will be as promptly rewarded, by his dismissal from a bench which he disgraces and defiles by his presence.

No.  VI

Anecdotes.

As we mounted our horses to proceed to Amherst, groups of country people were to be seen standing about Pugnose’s inn, talking over the events of the morning, while others were dispersing to their several homes.  A pretty prime superfine scoundrel, that Pettifog, said the Clockmaker; he and his constable are well mated, and they’ve travelled in the same gear so long together, that they make about as nice a yoke of rascals, as you’ll meet in a day’s ride.  They pull together like one rope reeved through two blocks.  That are constable was een almost strangled t’other day; and if he had’nt had a little grain more wit than his master, I guess he’d had his wind-pipe stopped as tight as a bladder.  There is an outlaw of a feller here, for all the world like one of our Kentucky Squatters, one Bill Smith—­a critter that neither fears man nor devil.  Sheriff and constable can make no hand of him—­they can’t catch him no how; and if they do come up with him, he slips through their fingers like an eel:  and then, he goes armed, and he can knock the eye out of a squirrel with a ball, at fifty yards hand running—­a regular ugly customer.  Well, Nabb, the constable, had a writ agin him, and he was cyphering a good while how he should catch him; at last he hit on a plan that he thought was pretty clever, and he scheemed for a chance to try it.  So one day he heard that Bill was up at Pugnose’s Inn, a settling some business, and was likely to be there all night.  Nabb waits till it was considerable late in the evening, and then he takes his horse and rides down to the inn, and hitches his beast behind the hay stack.  Then he crawls up to the window and peeps in, and watches there till Bill should go to bed, thinking the best way to catch them are sort of animals is to catch them asleep.  Well, he kept Nabb a waiting outside so long, with his talking and singing, that he well nigh fell asleep fist himself; at last Bill began to strip for bed.  First he takes out a long pocket pistol, examines the priming, and lays it down on the table, near the head of the bed.