Bunce, if the reader will remember, had, upon his release from prison,
taken up his abode temporarily in the village. Under the protection now
afforded by the presence of the judge, and the other officers of
justice--not to speak of the many strangers from the adjacent parts,
whom one cause or another had brought to the place--he had presumed to
exhibit his person with much more audacity and a more perfect freedom
from apprehension than he had ever shown in the same region before. He
now--for ever on the go--thrust himself fearlessly into every cot and
corner. No place escaped the searching analysis of his glance; and, in a
scrutiny so nice, it was not long before he had made the acquaintance of
everybody and everything at all worthy, in that region, to be known. He
could now venture to jostle Pippin with impunity; for, since the trial
in which he had so much blundered, the lawyer had lost no small portion
of the confidence and esteem of his neighbors. Accused of the
abandonment of his client--an offence particularly monstrous in the
estimation of those who are sufficiently interested to acquire a
personal feeling in such matters--and compelled, as he had been--a worse
feature still in the estimation of the same class--to "eat his own
words"--he had lost caste prodigiously in the last few days, and his
fine sayings lacked their ancient flavor in the estimation of his
neighbors.
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