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DUTY AND INCLINATION.
59

in collecting the various information necessary to aid him towards effecting his acquittal, and for this purpose he engaged an able counsellor, a man of activity and talent, accustomed to and skilled in the art of pleading. Thus occupied with a multiplicity of business to which his memory was unequal, some of the officers under his late command, who were more conversant with the concerns of the depot, and who were alike implicated with himself, in that critical moment, when so much depended upon the clearness and perspicuity of their evidence, involving no less than loss of honour and its consequent humiliation, lent him their assistance to place each point in that due order and arrangement indispensable to appear before the Court,—that tribunal of justice to which he had himself appealed, and upon the decision of which depended his rise or fall, the future fate and fortunes of himself and family: leaving this important affair thus pending, having been several months absent, he hastened to rejoin his family.

After so much vexation, perplexity, and trouble, how soothing to his soul was the sight of his wife and children! Although ties the most valued were broken, and his friends, relatives, and country had forsaken him, and although his reputation was at stake, yet how cheering the thought that one in-