"
"An _alibi_, clearly established," was the remark of Counsellor Pippin,
who now, peering over the shoulders of the youth, exhibited his face for
the first time during the controversies of the day. Pippin was
universally known to be possessed of an admirable scent for finding out
a danger when it is well over, and when the spoils, and not the toils,
of the field are to be reaped. His appearance at this moment had the
effect of arousing, in some sort, the depressed spirits of those around
him, by recalling to memory and into exercise the jests upon his
infirmities, which long use had made legitimate and habitual.
Calculating the probable effect of such a joke, Munro, without seeming
to observe the interruption, looking significantly round among the
assembly, went on to say--
"If you have been thus assaulted, young man, and I am not disposed to
say it is not as you assert, it can not have been by any of our village,
unless it be that Counsellor Pippin and his fellow Hob were the persons:
they were down, now I recollect, at the Catcheta pass, somewhere about
the time; and I've long suspected Pippin to be more dangerous than
people think him.
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