Here, attended by music, he personally published his challenge in a deep and sonorous voice, calling upon the corporation in right of his championship, to produce a man in ten clear days ready to undertake battle with him as a pugilist, or otherwise to pay him the sum of fifty guineas out of their own proper exchequer.
Having thus thrown down his gauntlet, the musicians played a dead march, and there was certainly something wild and fearful in the association produced by these strains of death and the fatality of encountering him.

This challenge he repeated at the same place and hour during three successive days, after which he calmly awaited the result.
In the mean time, certain circumstances came to light, which not only developed many cruel and profligate traits in his disposition, but also enabled the worthy inhabitants of the town to ascertain several facts relating to his connections, which in no small degree astonished them.
The candid and modest female whose murder and robbery had been planned by Nell M'Collum, resided with him as his wife; at least if he did not acknowledge her as such, no person who had an opportunity of witnessing her mild and gentle deportment, ever for a moment conceived her capable of living with him in any other character, his conduct to her, however, was brutal in the extreme, nor was his open and unmanly cruelty lessened by the misfortune of her having lost the money which he had accumulated.
With Nell M'Collum he was also acquainted, for he had given orders that she should be admitted to him whenever she deemed it necessary.

Nell, though now at large, found her motions watched with a vigilance which no ingenuity on her part, could baffle.

She knew this, and was resolved by caution to overreach those who dogged her so closely.

Her intimacy with the Dead Boxer threw a shade of still deeper mystery around her own character and his.