« continued the attorney, raising his voice, »you
are a magistrate, and know what is law, and what is not law. I ask you, sir, if
shooting a man is a thing that is to be settled so very easily? Suppose, sir,
that the young man had a wife and family; and suppose that he was a mechanic,
like yourself, sir; and suppose that his family depended on him for bread; and
suppose that the ball, instead of merely going through the flesh, had broken the
shoulder-blade, and crippled him for ever; - I ask you all, gentlemen, supposing
this to be the case, whether a jury wouldn't give what I call handsome damages?«
    As the close of this supposititious case was addressed to the company,
generally, Hiram did not, at first, consider himself called on for a reply; but
finding the eyes of the listeners bent on him in expectation, he remembered his
character for judicial discrimination, and spoke, observing a due degree of
deliberation and dignity.
    »Why, if a man should shoot another,« he said, »and if he should do it on
purpose, and if the law took notice on't, and if a jury should find him guilty,
it would be likely to turn out a state-prison matter.«
    »It would so, sir,« returned the attorney. - »The law, gentlemen, is no
respecter of persons, in a free country. It is one of the great blessings that
has been handed down to us from our ancestors, that all men are equal in the eye
of the law, as they are by nater. Though some may get property, no one knows
how, yet they are not privileged to trangress the laws, any more than the
poorest citizen in the state. This is my notion, gentlemen; and I think that if
a man had a mind to bring this matter up, something might be made out of it,
that would help pay for the salve - ha! Doctor?«
    »Why, sir,« returned the physician, who appeared a little uneasy at the turn
the conversation was taking, »I have the promise of Judge Temple, before men -
not but what I would take his word as soon as his note of hand - but it was
before men. Let me see - there was Mounshier Ler Quow, and Squire Jones, and
Major Hartmann, and Miss Pettibone, and one or two of the blacks by, when he
said that his pocket would amply