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me a homeless outlaw, while reproach, instead of protection, is a father's endowment for thee. Dear, dear father! do not reproach yourself so harshly. If the world call what you have done by a very dreadful name, it is not a true one: equal fighting, though for a foolish quarrel, deserves not that appellation.

Whatever it may deserve, it will have it, when there is no witness to prove the contrary. Fatheringham alone was present, and he disappeared on the instant. When my trial came, I could not prove that the man I had slain fell in equal combat; nay, was the real aggressor in first attacking me.

It was cowardly and strange,—it was not the act of a friend to disappear and leave you so exposed.

Some evil fate befell him: he was not alive, I am certain, when I was apprehended, else he would have come forward like an honest, manly friend in my justification. The sentence of death