olicitor-General, chiefly in order that he might draw the
salary incidental to that office during a two years' visit to England.
Soon after his return he had again been appointed Attorney-General, and
had early signalized his re-accession to office by his manner of
prosecuting certain criminals from the Red River country, who had been
placed on trial at York. Those proceedings do not fall within the
purview of this work, but it may be said with reference to the young
Attorney-General's connection with them that he had proved himself an
exceedingly narrow partisan and a docile pupil of Dr. Strachan. He now
presented himself to take a leading part in one of the most shameless
and iniquitous prosecutions that ever disgraced a court of justice. His
personal appearance was decidedly prepossessing. His figure, clad in
well-fitting garments of the fashionable cut of the period, was light,
agile and compact, and his face, rather inclining to narrowness, was
surmounted by a high and smoothly-finished brow, beneath which looked
out a pair of steel-grey eyes, the usual expression of which was eager
and firm, but on the whole not unkindly. His mouth was finely formed,
and when he was in a pleasant humour--as indeed he not infrequently
was--his smile was sweet and ingratiating. In intellectual capacity he
was considerably in advance of most of his professional brethren of that
day, and he had cultivated his natural abilities by constant
watchfulness and study. His features, one and all, were well and sharply
defined, and he was probably the handsomest man at the Provincial bar.

Several other members of the legal profession, all of them more or less
widely known in the forensic, judicial or political annals of the
Province, were present. Conspicuous among them was the brilliant but
unscrupulous Christoper Alexander Hagerman, who had already taken high
rank at the bar, and was destined to be one of the most active and
intolerant directors of the oligarchical policy. Archibald McLean, tall
and lithe of limb, had then been more than four years at the bar, and he
had already given evidence of the high abilities which were to gain for
him an honoured seat upon the judicial bench. He had been retained to
defend two prisoners at the Niagara assizes, and his presence in the
court-room was due to this fact. Another figure at the barristers' table
was Samuel Peters Jarvis, his hands yet red with the blood of young John
Ridout, ruthlessly shed