characters among the nobility and gentry of the country, fighting-peers,
fire-eaters, snuff-candle squires, members of the hell-fire and
jockey clubs, gaugers, gentlemen tinners, bluff yeomen, laborers,
cudgel-players, parish pugilists, men of renown within a district of ten
square miles, all jostled each other in hurrying to see, and if possible
to have speech of, the Dead Boxer. Not a word was spoken that day,
except with reference to him, nor a conversation introduced, the topic
of which was not the Dead Boxer. In the town every window was filled
with persons standing to get a view of him; so were the tops of the
houses, the dead walls, and all the cars, gates, and available eminences
within sight of the way along which he went. Having thus perambulated
the town, he returned to the market-cross, which, as we have said, stood
immediately in front of his inn. Here, attended by music, he personally
published his challenge in a deep and sonorous voice, calling upon the
corporation in right of his championship, to produce a man in ten clear
days ready to undertake battle with him as a pugilist, or otherwise to
pay him the sum of fifty guineas out of their own proper exchequer.

Having thus thrown down his gauntlet, the musicians played a dead march,
and there was certainly something wild and fearful in the association
produced by these strains of death and the fatality of encountering
him. This challenge he repeated at the same place and hour during three
successive days, after which he calmly awaited the result.

In the mean time, certain circumstances came to light, which not only
developed many cruel and profligate traits in his disposition, but also
enabled the worthy inhabitants of the town to ascertain several facts
relating to his connections, which in no small degree astonished them.
The candid and modest female whose murder and robbery had been planned
by Nell M'Collum, resided with him as his wife; at least if he did not