any other man,
people at least might have thought it accident; but now it would always
be believed that he had acted from secret malice and a bad heart.

The fact was, that he and his sweetheart had gone to a neighbouring
fair, where this man had met them. The man had often tried to affront
him; and his passiveness, interpreted into cowardice, had perhaps
encouraged the other to additional rudeness. Finding that he had endured
trivial insults to himself with an even temper, the deceased now thought
proper to turn his brutality upon the young woman that accompanied him.
He pursued them; he endeavoured in various manners to harass and vex
them; they had sought in vain to shake him off. The young woman was
considerably terrified. The accused expostulated with their persecutor,
and asked him how he could be so barbarous as to persist in frightening
a woman? He replied with an insulting tone, "Then the woman should find
some one able to protect her; people that encouraged and trusted to such
a thief as that, deserved no better!" The accused tried every expedient
he could invent; at length he could endure it no longer; he became
exasperated, and challenged the assailant. The challenge was accepted; a
ring was formed; he confided the care of his sweetheart to a bystander;
and unfortunately the first blow he struck proved fatal.

The accused added, that he did not care what became of him. He had been
anxious to go through the world in an inoffensive manner, and now he had
the guilt of blood upon him. He did not know but it would be kindness in
them to hang him out of the way; for his conscience would reproach him
as long as he lived, and the figure of the deceased, as he had lain
senseless and without motion at his feet, would perpetually haunt him.
The thought of this man, at one moment full of life and vigour, and the
next lifted a helpless corpse from the ground, and all owing to him, was
a thought too dreadful to be endured. He had loved the poor maiden, who
had been the innocent occasion of this, with all his heart; but from
this time he should never support the sight of her. The sight would
bring a tribe of fiends in its rear. One unlucky minute had poisoned all
his hopes, and made life a burden to him. Saying this, his countenance
fell, the muscles of his face trembled with agony, and he looked the
statue of despair.

This was the story of which Mr. Falkland was called upon to be the
auditor. Though the incidents were,