Page:Lynch Williams--The girl and the game.djvu/95

 you know that I am,' etc., with a pinch of snuff and a bow, and the usual stage directions. (Think of all that sort of thing going on up in quiet-looking old North.)

"But this fellow had a way with him. He was a great talker—I always fancied it was Aaron Burr, but tradition doesn't tell his name, and you may be sure the diary does not—he was a smooth one, anyway—so finally they organized a plot. A very comprehensive, melodramatic plot with masks and horse-pistols, and—this is what happened. The next afternoon one of them rode down the pike to the westward—not my ancestor; he had an examination to attend to. But this other fellow arrived at the old tavern there in Trenton, I forget the name of the street, on the corner of the turnpike, about the time the night coach was expected. There was nothing about this that could excite suspicion, because they often rode down to this tavern and they were well known there. It was a stormy day and the coach was several hours late in arriving. When the passengers got out for supper this chap sized