and if he resorted to cunning, it was because cunning
alone could serve his purpose in a country, the laws of
which were not openly to be defied.

For a series of years after his arrival, he had contrived
to evade taking the customary oaths of allegiance; but
this, eventually awakening the suspicions of the magistracy,
brought him more immediately under their surveillance,
when, year after year, he was compelled to a renewal of
the oath, for the imposition of which, it was thought,
he owed more than one of those magistrates a grudge. On
the breaking out of the war, he still remained in
undisturbed possession of his rude dwelling, watched as
well as circumstances would permit, it is true, but not
so narrowly as to be traced in his various nocturnal
excursions by water. Nothing could be conceived more
uncouth in manner and appearance than this man--nothing
more villainous than the expression of his eye. No one
knew from what particular point of the United States he
had come, and whether Yankee or Kentuckian, it would have
puzzled one of that race of beings, so proverbial for
acumen--a Philadelphia lawyer--to have determined; for
so completely did he unite the boasting language of the
latter with the wary caution and sly cunning of the
former, that he appeared a compound of both. The general
opinion, however, seemed rather, to incline in favor of
the presumption that he was less Kentuckian than Yankee.

The day following that of the capture of the American
detachment was just beginning to dawn, as two individuals