OLD BILL SMITH, THE SILENT HUNTER. 217 



" Tills must not be so while I have a crust. Children must 

 not starve in such a country as this !" So saying, he took the 

 child gently in his arms, and bore it into his house, where his 

 good old wife immediately took the dying orphan to her 

 bosom, and soon warmed it into life again; but with the 

 utmost exercise of her matronly skill, it was several days 

 before the exhausted little one could recover strength enough 

 to give any coherent account of himself. 



Judge Campbell knew old Saunders well, and when he 

 heard the boy's straight-forward story, he had every reason to 

 believe that it was true, every word of it. In the meantime 

 he had got up a great interest in this little waif and estray, 

 which it had pleased Providence to cast in his path ; and as 

 the old couple had no children, but two daughters who were 

 married and comfortably settled, they finally determined to 

 submit to what seemed like a requisition upon them by the 

 Father of all on behalf of the fatherless, and adopted little 

 Smith into their family as a son. 



The Circuits were some of them very large at that time, as 

 was especially the case with that of Judge Campbell's. Soon 

 after this event he started on his round, and what was his 

 inexpressible delight to find the first case on the docket, in 

 the county which had the honor of owning old Saunders for 

 a citizen, marked " Commonwealth vs. Samuel Saunders, for 

 abducting, murdering, or otherwise unlawfully making away 

 with an indentured male child, known as William Smith," 

 &c. &c. 



The old man could scarcely contain his gravity upon the 

 bench. He immediately ordered up the case — ruled down all 

 quibbling attempts to obtain a postponement — and it was the 

 general remark among the lawyers, that the usually lenient 

 Judge was more severe and harsh this term than they had 

 ever known him to be before in twenty years upon the bench. 



The case came on. The Judge compelled the minutest 

 scrutiny of all the facts, and a most damning case was made 



