Stem to Stern by Oliver Optic

Major Billcord had the services of a distinguished lawyer from Plattsburgh and of another from Elizabethtown to defend himself and the six ruffians. They almost made a "celebrated case" of it. They got the trial into the county court, and the six ruffians were sentenced to ten days confinement in the county prison, and the major himself to thirty days.

The assault and the conspiracy were too outrageous, in the opinion of the justice, to be punished with a simple fine. The workingmen and the farmers had got hold of the case and talked a great deal about it. Against the advice of the eminent legal gentlemen he employed, Paul Bristol was prosecuted for the first assault upon Walker Billcord, and this brought in the testimony of Lily and her mother, which the lawyers wanted to keep out. This evidence completed the history of the case by filling in the beginning of the trouble.