to the hotel where Wilkinson lodged, and waylaid him at the door between the dining-parlor and the reception-room, and attacked him on his coming in from supper.  In the rencontre three of the assailants were killed, and the remainder of the gang fled.  Immediately surrendering himself, he was incarcerated and held for trial:  although assaulted with murderous intent, and acting clearly in self-defence, he was denied bail.  He was a stranger, and the prejudices of the court and the people of Louisville were so manifest that he demanded and obtained a change of venire.

The trial came off at Harrodsburg.  Prentiss, learning the facts and the situation of his friend, volunteered immediately to defend him in court, and to befriend him in any manner possible to him.  The celebrated Ben Hardin was employed to assist in the prosecution.  The eyes of all Mississippi and Kentucky were turned to Harrodsburg when this trial commenced.  Others volunteered—­and among these was John Rowan—­to assist in the defence.  But the case for Wilkinson was conducted exclusively by Prentiss.  It continued for some days.  John Rowan—­so celebrated in the State for his talents and great legal learning, as well as for his transcendent abilities as an advocate—­sat by, and trusted all to Prentiss.

There were many sparrings in the course of the trial between Hardin and Prentiss upon points in the law of evidence, and as to the admissibility or rejection of testimony, as also upon many points of the criminal law of England, whether changed or not by statutory provisions of the State.

In one of these, Rowan handed an open authority to Prentiss, and was taunted by Hardin for the act, by saying:  “Give your friend all the aid you can:  he needs it.”

“I only preserved the book open at the page where Mr. Prentiss had marked the law,” said Rowan:  “he requires no aid from me, brother Hardin.  With all your learning and experience, he is more than a match for you.”

This Hardin was not long in discovering, and especially did he feel it when Prentiss came to reply to his address to the jury.  So long accustomed to defy competition as a criminal lawyer, Hardin was not only surprised at the tact and masterly talent displayed by his adversary, but he was annoyed, and felt that to maintain his prestige as the great criminal lawyer of Kentucky, he must put forth all his powers.  He had done so; and in his summing up before the jury he seemed more than himself.  When he had concluded there were many who deemed conviction sure.

Prentiss followed, and in his grandest manner tore to tatters every argument and every position advanced and assumed by Hardin.  Towering in the majesty of his genius in one of those transcendent flights of imagination so peculiar to him, when his illustrations in figures followed each other in such quick and constant succession as to seem inexhaustible, he turned suddenly upon Hardin, and, stooping his face until it almost