companion had been entangled in a fight for all comers, in which one
man was seriously injured by some weapon. The companion, Norris,
was tried and convicted for manslaughter of Metzgar, receiving
the sentence of eight years' imprisonment. But Armstrong was to be
indicted for murder, as the injuries were indicated as inflicted with
a blunt instrument, and a witness affirmed that they were done by a
slung-shot in Armstrong's hands. It was little excuse that he, like
the rest implicated, was drunk at the time. Nevertheless, dissolute as
was the young man of two-and-twenty, Lincoln did not need the woman's
assurance that her son was incapable of murder so deliberate.
Armstrong averred that any blow he struck was done with the naked
fist. Furthermore, it was said that Metzgar was not left insensible
on the field of battle, but was going home beside a yoke of oxen when
the yoke-end cracked his skull; it was this, and no slung-shot, that
caused his death the following day.

Recognizing that the complication forebode a strenuous task, Lincoln
none the less accepted it and, assuring his old "Aunt Hannah" that he
would not suffer her to talk of remuneration, he resumed the toga to
contest the effort to take away Armstrong's life and release Norris,
as convicted under error.

He closeted himself with the prisoner to hear his account, and upon
that concluded he was guiltless. It has been said that Lincoln would
never undertake a defense of a man he believed guilty. This held good
in the present instance.

As the statement about the slung-shot blow was made by a man who
disputed the ox-yoke accident, and that the fatal hurts were received
in the free fight at the camp-meeting, it was necessary that he should