The magistrate instantly admitted both the force and ingenuity of the
thought; and after having appointed three persons to the task of keeping
her under surveillance, he set her at large.

This was all judicious and prudent; but in the mean time, common rumor,
having first published the fact of young Lamh Laudher'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