er's cowardice, found
it an easy task to associate his name with the robbery. His very father,
after their last conference with the magistrate, doubted him; his
friends, in the most sympathetic terms, expressed their conviction of
his guilt, and the natural consequence resulting from this was, that he
found himself expelled from his paternal roof, and absolutely put out
of caste. The tide of ill-fame, in fact, set in so strongly against
him, that Ellen, startled as she had been by his threat of taking to
the highway, doubted him. The poor young man, in truth, led a miserable
life. Nanse M'Collum had not been found, and the unfavorable rumor was
still at its height, when one morning the town arose and found the walls
and streets placarded with what was in those days known as the fatal
challenge of the DEAD BOXER!

This method of intimating his arrival had always been peculiar to that
individual, who was a man of color. No person ever discovered the
means by which he placarded his dreadful challenge. In an age of
gross superstition, numerous were the rumors and opinions promulgated
concerning this circumstance. The general impression was, that an evil
spirit attended him, by whose agency his advertisements were put up at
night; A law, it is said, then existed, that when a pugilist arrived in
any town, He might claim the right to receive the sum of fifty guineas,
provided no man in the town could be found to accept his challenge
within a given period. A champion, if tradition be true, had the
privilege of fixing only the place, not the mode and regulations of
battle. Accordingly the scene of contest uniformly selected by the Dead
Boxer was the church-yard of the town, beside a new made grave, dug at
his expense. The epithet of the Dead Boxer had been given to him, in
consequence of a certain fatal stroke by which he had been able to kill
every antagonist who dared to meet him; precisely on the same principle
that we call a fatal marksman a dead shot; and the church-yard was
selected, and the grave prepared, in order to denote the fatality
incurred by those who went into a contest with him. He was famous, too,
at athletic sports, but was never known to communicate the secret of
the fatal blow; he also taught the sword exercises, at which he was
considered to be a proficient.

On the morning after his arrival, the town in which we have laid the
scene of this legend felt the usual impulse of an intense curiosity to
see so c