d for a song sung by
themselves, their signatures to a deed of property of which they had
never heard; he had proven that John Williams, Junior, son of John
Williams, Senior, was born out of wedlock, had gone grubbing back into
forgotten burying-places, and disinterred the dead, searched out the
weakness of their lives; had raked out a forgotten scandal, carefully
gathered it up in its rottenness, and had poured it out, before the
jury; and the frailty and infamy of an unhappy woman, and the crime of
one wretched man, were the sole virtue and strength of his case--sole
source of his title to the land in dispute. And the plaintiff demanded
that the law in its honor should now rob poor Cole of his homestead,
and of the graves of his children, that John Fisk--or rather, Sam
Ward--might possess that to which he had just the same moral right,
that Dr. Myers had to the horses he stole. And this learned Court, and
gentlemen of the jury, pioneers in these receding woods, are to be the
instruments of this transfer.

The language was simple and plain, the imagery bold and striking,
and the closing sentences were pronounced with great fervor. The jury
shrank from the issue, which might have a possible conclusion, and
looked eagerly for any escape, as jurors will.

The young advocate clearly opened out the nature of the defence of
adverse possession, and the philosophy upon which it rested; and
explained that the defendant, to meet the plaintiff's paper case, must
show that he and those under whom he claimed, had been in the open,
continued, and notorious possession of the property for twenty years,
before suit was brought, claiming to be the owners. This the defendant
was to show, at the peril of destruction; and in a few happy sentences
he brought the jury to feel an intense anxiety that he should succeed.

Then he turned back the years, blotted out the highways, re-planted
the forests, till the court house dissolved, and a wondrous maple
wood crowned the hill on which it stood. And so back, till the Indians
returned, and elk and panthers roamed at will. Then he pointed out
a sorrow-stricken, moody, brooding man, seeking a "lodge in the vast
wilderness," hunting the spring, and building his shanty, making his
clearing, and planting a few apple seeds, brought from his old home;
and picking up the section of the tree trunk, he read off from its
end, "twenty-nine years ago!"

He sketched in rapid, natural lines, the life of the