u
had no choice, no alternative. What else could you have done? Outlawed
and under sentence, I knew that you could never return, in any safety or
security, whatever might be your disguise, to the society which had
driven you out--and I'm sure that your chance would be but a bad one
were you to seek a return to the old practice at Gwinnett courthouse.
Any attempt there to argue a fellow out of the halter would be only to
argue yourself into it."

"Pshaw, Munro, that is the case now--that is the necessity and
difficulty of to-day. But where, and what was the necessity, think you,
when, in the midst of good practice at Gwinnett bar, where I ruled
without competitor, riding roughshod over bench, bar, and jury, dreaded
alike by all, I threw myself into the ranks of these men, and put on
their habits? I speak not now in praise of myself, more than the facts,
as you yourself know them, will sufficiently warrant. I am now above
those idle vanities which would make me deceive myself as to my own
mental merits; but, that such was my standing there and then, I hold
indisputable."

"It is true. I sometimes look back and laugh at the manner in which you
used to bully the old judge, and the gaping jury, and your own brother
lawyers, while the foam would run through your clenched teeth and from
your lips in very passion; and then I wondered, when you were doing so
well, that you ever gave up there, to undertake a business, the very
first job in which put your neck in danger."

"You may well wonder, Munro. I could not well explain the mystery to
myself, were I to try; and it is this which made the question and doubt
which we set out to explain. To those who knew me well from the first,
it is not matter of surprise that I should be for ever in excitements of
one kind or another. From my childhood up, my temper was of a restless
and unquiet character--I was always a peevish, a fretful and
discontented person. I looked with scorn and contempt upon the humdrum
ways of those about me, and longed for perpetual change, and wild and
stirring incidents. My passions, always fretful and excitable, were
never satisfied except when I was employed in some way which enabled me
to feed and keep alive the irritation which was their and my very breath
of life. With such a spirit, how could I be what men style and consider
a good man? What folly to expect it. Virtue is but a sleepy, in-door,
domestic quality--inconsistent with enterprise or great acti