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 him wind his arm tight round her. Presently she said, and said it very sweet, too;

"Marmontel has won a great deal off you, hasn't he?"

"The matter of four thousand," replied he, very gloomily.

"You would win it back, and more, if I were to spin the ball to-night, and you were my partner," she went on, still very nicely.

"You're mocking me!" said he in French, but his face flushed with the word; "the thing's not possible."

"Not possible!" said she, looking up at him in her saucy way—"not possible, when two of the croupiers at Monaco made a fortune out of it last year. Oh, Sir Nicolas Steele, how simple you are!"

"But it's a new idea to me," said he, and he was excited too. "Will you show it to me once more?"

"What number will you have?" asked she.

"Twenty-seven for luck!" cried he.

I saw her take the little ball in her hand and spin the basin. When at last it stopped, Sir Nicolas gave a great cry and jumped up off his seat.

"There's a fortune in that," said he.

"Without doubt, for those that know how to use it," was her answer.

"You mean" said he.

But what she meant I never heard, for they had both risen from their seats, and I thought it about time to make off. She was locking the little basin in

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 one of the cupboards of the arbor when I left them, and he was bending over her, earnest in talk. I fancied, however, as I went along, that I could have told him as much as she could, and, truth to tell, the few words I had heard had knocked the bottom clean out of all my speculations.

"Bigg," said I to myself, "if ever you're starving, don't go to think that you'll make a fortune out of keyholes. Why, what's it come to? You've been asking all along who's her confederate, and here she's choosing Nicky himself for the part. If it don't beat cock-fighting, I'm a Dutchman."

Take it as I would, I must say that it did alter in a moment all my theories about the château and its pretty mistress. So long as I had looked to find my master a victim of the woman, so long did I suspect every man and every move in and out of the great house. But once it came home to me that she had invited us there to help her, then the whole game was clear to me. The comte, I was sure, dare not show in the house because some of madame's guests knew him to their cost. Nicky was chosen for the part as a man who wouldn't stand at much, and who would cover madame's tricks. As for her being able to throw what number she liked—well, it's all history that a croupier did it at Monte Carlo last winter. "But," said I, "only the very devil of a woman would have gone so deep"—and that was gospel truth.

It was about five o'clock when I got back to my

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African slavery has always met with a spirited, yet compromising opposition from the American people. From the time it first began to attract attention in the English colonies, the earnest prayer and efforts of the inhabitants have been to prevent its extension, and provide for its ultimate extinction. But the history of this foul institution will show that whenever by its growth the bonds of legislation have become too tight, it has broken them; that whenever the patriotic and freedom-loving people of this country have met its advance with a determined resistance, it has, by menacing the existence of the General Government, or brandishing aloft the sword of disunion, compelled them in order to avert the threatened danger, to acquiesce in its demands; that thus it ruled the founders of our Republic and the Congress of the United States, until it challenged a contest with Freedom at the ballot-box in the distant field of Kansas; that here, discarding its chosen weapon, and trampling under foot the sanctity of the ballot-box—the palladium of American liberty—it sought to attain its ends by its usual tactics,—intimidation, force and fraud; that here, Freedom, driven to the very door of her temple, comprehending the real character of the monster with which she had to grapple, fought with the valor and prowess of an angel, combatting Satan and his demons in their approach upon the battlements of Heaven; that, its loathsome and blighting presence driven back from the sacred soil of Kansas, smarting from defeat, with its ungovernable spirit enraged by


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 room, and I did not see Sir Nicolas again until the gong went for dressing. He was silent, as usual, but he did not hide it from me that his nerves were all on the twitch; while the slap-dash way he put on his clothes was a tale in itself. When at last he did go down, he shouted to me that he should want me no more that night, and that possibly we should be going back to Paris next morning—at which I laughed to myself, as well I might.

"You'll go back to Paris with full pockets, Nicky," said I to myself; "but you won't be so pleased when you learn more about the chap yonder, and the kissing he does in the wood. Love's a very pleasant business, but it don't do to take partners."

I was still laughing over the notion when I put his clothes away and went down to my own supper. There was plenty of time before me,—for I meant to see the play in the drawing-room that night,—and it was not until ten o'clock was chimed from the spire of the château that I lighted my pipe and went out into the grounds. But I was doomed to a big disappointment. For the first time since I had been at the house, the shutters of the room were closed. Not a ray of light passed them. You couldn't hear a sound, standing on the lawn as I did. All the folks might have packed up their bags and gone back to the city. The place might have been as deserted as the grave.

I was annoyed at this, you may be sure, and having nothing particular to do, I took a stroll through

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 the woods toward the little pavilion where I had seen and heard so many queer things. But here, for the second time that evening, all was changed. The door of the little house was wide open. Inside it was dark as death. More than that, I had not taken twenty steps on my way home through the thicket when I came across something which I had heard of before, but the recollection of which had gone clean out of my head. It was a red lantern swinging at the branch of a tree.

"Halloa!" said I, and I suppose that I spoke aloud, "so here's the lantern you asked after, my friend—and red too. Well, if I know any thing of that color, it means danger."

Now, I'm not a timid man, but when you speak to yourself, believing there's no one within a mile of you, it does give you a start to get an answer. And the words were scarce off my lips when some one in the wood at my right hand called out to me, and in good English too;

"Yes, that means danger, Bigg."

"Who the devil are you?" said I, turning round sudden, but seeing nobody.

"I'm from across the Channel—but not on your job, Bigg, so don't trouble yourself. It's the Comte de Faugère I'd be glad to shake hands with."

Saying this, a little man dressed in a bowler hat and a short black coat sprang out of the thicket and faced me. I guessed how things stood in a minute—detective was written all over his face.

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 opposition, it attacked the life of the beneficent government which had fostered its growth through forbearance, and perished from the sword of its own drawing.

The odious distinction of establishing negro slavery in the thirteen colonies belongs to England. Although the Dutch were the first to engage in transporting Africans to the colonies, yet, under their commerce alone, it languished, and slavery thus introduced could easily have been removed by the benevolent spirit of colonial legislation. It was not until after the treaty of Utrecht, under English monopoly, that the slave trade with the colonies acquired its importance. By the decisions of her chief counsellors, York and Talbot, England legalized it; by her sovereignty the American ports were thrown open to the slave trade, and the prohibitions of the colonies against such importation annulled; by her Queens and Lords, the business was carried on and profits shared; by her ministers, a cloak of religion was thrown around its foulness, and they called it a mode to evangelize the heathen; by her merchants it was declared that “negro labor will keep our colonies in due subserviency to their mother country; for while our plantations depend only on planting by the negro, our colonies can never prove injurious to British manufactories, never become independent of their kingdom.” In 1702 Queen Anne instructed the governor of New York and New Jersey to “give due encouragement to slave merchants, and in particular to the royal African Company of England.” In 1775 the Earl of Dartmouth declares “we can not allow the colonies to check, or discourage in any degree, a traffic so beneficial to the nation.” Prior to 1740 England had introduced into the colonies about one hundred and thirty thousand blacks; by 1776 it had increased to three hundred thousand. The population of negro slaves among the thirteen colonies in 1754 stood as follows: New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine, 3,000; Rhode Island, 4,500; Connecticut 3,500; New York 11,000; New Jersey


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"Well," said I, "so you want the count?"

"I do," said be, "and pretty badly; but it's not this time, I fancy. He's a hundred miles from here by this."

"And his wife"

"Be dd to her!" said he. "She's the cleverest woman I ever met, and she's done me again, I reckon. You give your guv'ner the tip. If he makes any money up yonder let him tie up his breeches pocket tight. If he don't, she'll steal every penny of it "

"Do you say that?" cried I.

"I do so," said he. "If I was him, and I had any winnings hanging about, I'd bank 'em at Brest, and take thundering good care they didn't go by her messenger. But you don't want to be told twice."

I said that I did not, and after a few words of thanks to him—for he'd put me all in a fever—I ran back to the house, determined that Nicky should know the whole story before another hour had passed. In this attempt luck favored me for the first time. I found my master walking on the lawn with young Lord Beyton. They were smoking together, and seemed to be in earnest talk.

"Well, Hildebrand," said Sir Nicolas, when he saw me, "what keeps you up at this time of night?"

"A letter you gave me to-day, sir," said I. "Could I speak to you about it for a minute?"

He took the hint, and, leaving Beyton, he walked

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 across the lawn with me. Before we took the second turn, I had told him the story.

"Good God!" said he, turning very pale. "Are ye sure of it?"

"As sure as you're talking to me."

"And the man's her husband?"

"Something like that," said I.

"The little witch!" cried he, though it was plain that the news hit him hard.

"But I've the matter of two thousand in notes, and promises for as much more in my pockets now," he went on after the pause. "Ye must know that I had the luck to-night when she came to the table."

"If that's the case, sir," said I, "the sooner the money's in the bank at Brest, the better for us."

"Ye speak truth," exclaimed he; "but who's to take it?"

"I'll start at dawn," said I; "meanwhile there's no need for me to go to sleep. I'm used to a night out of bed now and then."

"And what should I do?"

"Go on as usual, but take the first train to Paris in the morning. I don't fancy the police as footmen myself—nor you neither, I imagine?"

He said that he did not, and when he had given me the money—and the promise of two hundred and fifty if I got through safe with it—he went back to the others as I had suggested. But I returned to my room, and locking myself in, I waited for the dawn like a sick man. Many anxious nights I have passed

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 5,500; Pennsylvania and Delaware 11,000; Maryland 4,400; Virginia 116,000; North Carolina 20,000; South Carolina 40,000; Georgia 2,000. Between 1754 and 1776 these numbers must have been greatly augmented, as that was the most flourishing time for slave merchants. We have no means of ascertaining what number there was at the time the colonies declared their independence; but by the census taken in 1790 the population of slaves was returned as follows; New Hampshire 158; Rhode Island 952; Connecticut 2,759; Massachusetts emancipated hers in 1780; New York 21,324; New Jersey 11,423; Pennsylvania 3,737; Delaware 8,887; Maryland 103,036; Virginia 293,427; North Carolina 100,572; South Carolina 107,094; Georgia 29,264. It must be borne in mind that many had been emancipated by the northern States during and after the Revolution, and others had been taken into new States and Territories.

Thus did England plant “the great evil of Slavery” in the constitution of her colonies; and that in many cases against their earnest and filial remonstrance. Massachusetts always opposed the introduction of slaves from abroad, and in 1701 instructed her representatives “to put a period to negroes being slaves.” But the Earl of Dartmouth interposes his edict, “we cannot allow the colonies to check, or discourage, in any degree, a traffic so beneficial to the nation.” In 1645 two reputable townsmen of Boston, “sailed for Guinea to trade for negroes.” But when it is noised abroad, public sentiment pronounces them malefactors and murderers, and a worthy magistrate denounces their act as contrary to the law of God and the law of the country, “and committed the guilty men for the offense.” After advice with the elders and representatives of the people “bearing witness against the heinous crime of man-stealing,” ordered the negroes to be restored at the public charge “to their native country, with a letter expressing the indignation of the court” at their wrongs. But Queen Anne admonishes the governor “to give due encouragement to


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 in my life, but that was the worst of them all. Every whistle of the wind on the staircase, every creak of board or bed set my nerves agog. It seemed to me that I should never get out of the house with the money—perhaps not with my life. A hundred times I must have gone to my window to watch the park; a hundred times I thought I heard footsteps on the staircase, and opened my door to listen. Yet the first gray of daylight found me still where I was. Not a soul appeared to be in the grounds of the château. The old house loomed up out of the cold mists like a great deserted temple. Look where you would, you could see nothing but the trees and the green of the grass. The only sound was the shrill twittering of the birds in the bushes.

Ten minutes after the dawn had come, I left my room and set out upon the journey. I had tied the money round my waist, and had loaded my revolver before I started; but once in the park, these precautions, and my fear all night, looked pretty foolish. It was plain that I was the only man then about Mme. Pauline's place. Even the cattle were still lying upon the wet grass; the horses still sleeping in the meadows. As it was in the gardens, so I found it in the woods. The night keepers had gone to their beds; the dairymen were not yet out of doors. A beautiful stillness was everywhere, a freshness of the morning which was like champagne to a man. I had not walked a mile before my spirits came back to me, and I began to laugh out aloud at the little chap

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 slave merchants.” In Virginia slavery built up a landed aristocracy who loved “the institution.” But such was the spirit of popular liberty that it demands of the legislature to suppress the importation of slaves. The legislature yielding to some extent to the voice of its constituency levies a tax on each negro imported, but the Governor soon announces that “the interfering interests of the African company has obtained a repeal of that law.” Whereupon a statesman of Virginia, despairing of success, declares that “the British government of Virginia constantly checks the attempts of Virginia to put a stop to the infernal traffic.” In Georgia from the very first the colonists prohibited the introduction of slaves by law. James Oglethorpe writes, “my friends and I settled the colony of Georgia, and by charter were established trustees. We determined not to suffer slavery there; but the slave merchants and their adherents not only occasioned us much trouble, but at last got the government to sanction them.” In New York the Dutch offered to furnish slaves to the colonists, but the rigor of the climate more than the humanity of the people, prevented the rapid growth of slavery there. But notwithstanding the obstacles which the climate interposed, the governor is instructed by royal authority to encourage the importation of negroes. In 1712 Pennsylvania circulates a general petition for the gradual emancipation of slaves by law. In the New England States laws were framed prohibiting the holding of negroes as slaves. Every man owning slaves was required after ten years to emancipate them; and every one failing to comply with this regulation was fined twice the value of each slave thus held. Although this law was not strictly enforced, still it shows the feeling of the colony relative to slavery. Even South Carolina, where slavery is coeval with the settlement on Ashley River, and where it was found to be “very profitable,” complains in 1727 of “the vast importation of slaves,” and


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 in the bowler hat who had put the thing into ray head the night before.

"Good Lord," said I, "that you should fluster a man so, when I dare say she had no more thought of doing such a thing than of marrying Nicky! But that's always the way with policemen—they aren't content with what their eyes can see, but want to look at it through a microscope. Rob him? Not she, so long as he'll play for her."

I was pretty well through the wood at this time, and when the sun began to shine it found me on the high-road leading to the railway station. I had walked perhaps a mile down this when I saw a man on ahead of me, going my way, but slower than I was; and at the second look I recognized him. He was the little detective I had laughed at.

"Halloa, there!" I shouted, mighty glad to get company in my walk, "what are you doing abroad at this time of the morning?"

He waited for me to come up to him, and then he cried;

"Why, it's Bigg—and in a hurry, too!"

"You've put your thumb on it," said I. "And you didn't catch the count, I make sure, or you wouldn't be here."

"Catch him!" exclaimed he; "no, not quite. You don't take birds like him in the nest. He's too many sentinels."

"Is the charge a heavy one?" I asked as we walked along together.

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"Obtaining a diamond in London," said he; "but there's a dozen others. He's a bad one right through, is the Comte de Faugère."

I said that he must be, and then we both quickened up a bit.

"I'll be coming over here after Nicky Steele, by and by, I fancy," he remarked pleasantly, when we had covered a mile or more.

"Ah," said I, "it will want a sharp man for that job!"

"I won't deny it," cried he; "the way that chap keeps outside the law is a crusher. Here's a health to him!"

He had pulled a silver flask out of his pocket as he spoke, and raised it to his lips. Then he passed it over to me.

"Brandy, mate," said he; "you can't do better in the raw of the morning."

I took a good nip, for the day was bitter cold, and gave him back his flask. But I had not walked on ten yards when I found myself reeling like a drunken man—and then I fell heavily, with him bending over me.

One night, some ten days after I fell down insensible on the road to Brest, Sir Nicolas and I were talking in my bedroom in the village of Folgoet of Mme. Pauline and her château. I was still weak and bruised and unable to leave my bed, and he had come up to say good-night to me.

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 when she seeks to apply a restriction, she is met by a rebuke from the English ministry.

The immortal Declaration of Independence contains a clear and familiar expression of the sentiments of the colonists upon the natural rights of men at that time. That “all men are created equal, with certain inalienable rights” was no new conception of Jefferson; it was the embodiment of the deeply rooted convictions of the American people; an idea that had been fully discussed in their conventions. Even Georgia had, just the year previous, resolved in the Darien committee, “at all times to use our utmost efforts for the manumission of our slaves in this colony upon the most safe and equitable footing for the masters and themselves.” The clause in the original draft of the Declaration indicting George III, as the patron and upholder of the African slave trade, which was stricken out to satisfy South Carolina and Georgia, whose people had found slavery “profitable,” expresses clearly the feelings of the majority of the colonists in regard to this horrible traffic in human flesh. It reads as follows:

“Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for every legislative attempt to prohibit, or restrain this excerable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms against us, and purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”

The first Continental Congress in which the colonists enjoyed, for the first time, an unrestrained legislation, in accordance with the long expressed wish of the country, resolved “that no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen united colonies.”


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"All!" said he, "we'd be four thousand the richer to-day if you had never discovered that the Comte de Faugère had a liking for the woods."

"Say, rather, sir, if one of his gang had not played it off on me that he was a detective."

"Ye're right there. To give it out that he was an English officer, too! 'Twas a daring business altogether—for the French police were watching the house the very night when the woman stayed for a last deal. The count must have gone the day before. She left in the middle of the night, after I'd won the money for her. 'Tis the Lord only knows how she got away."

"I can tell you, sir, for I saw her in the woods one day disguised as a man. That's how she cheated them."

"I don't doubt it," said he; "they had sentinels everywhere, and used flags by day and lanterns by night for the danger signals. Sure, she was a wonderful woman—to rent a house like that and to play the part."

"Any way," said I, "her man nearly did for me."

"Indeed and he did. There was not much life in you when the priest found you, and carried you to the village."

"And not much money, either."

"They'd not left you sixpence for a cab-fare," cried he.

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 After the Revolution was over, the colonies having achieved their independence, the vast lands lying between the Alleghanies and Mississippi were held by certain members of the Confederacy. As the charters by which these lands were held conflicted; the whole having been won by the common valor of all the colonies; it was agreed, to avoid disputes and settle the matter upon equitable principles, that the colonies, thus holding lands, should cede their right over to the General Government. Accordingly in 1784 Mr. Jefferson reported “An Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded already, or to be ceded, by individual States to the United States; specifying that such territory extends from the 31st to the 47th degree of latitude, so as to include what now constitutes the States of Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi;” the fifth article of which ordinance declares “that after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States”—that is States formed from the said territory. The southern members generally voted against this bill, but it came so near being the fundamental law of the land, thus restricting slavery forever where the mother country had planted it, that it only lacked one vote, occasioned by the absence of a member from New Jersey.

In 1787 the last Continental Congress passed a law prohibiting slavery in the territory north-west of the Ohio River which Virginia had ceded to the United States, and to which other States had relinquished their claims. The prohibition reads as follows:

“There shall be neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in punishment of crime, whereof the parties shall be duly convicted.”

In the constitutional convention that framed the government under which we now live, the triumph of


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 was early in the summer of last year when Sir Nicolas Steele and I took different roads in life. They tell me that he has now settled down in a little village near Pau; but from him I hear nothing. It may be that my company would trouble him in these days; it may be that he would be very glad to see me if I knocked on his door. Those are questions I don't care to ask myself. Marriage changes a man, they say. Possibly it has changed him.

It was the summer of the year when I left him; and the early autumn brought me to America. I knew that there was breathing room across the water; and once I had done with Nicky Steele, I did not lose much time in putting the sea between me and those who troubled themselves with my concerns. And that's a step I have never regretted. There's room for every man in the States, so long as he carries a decent head on his shoulders and a bit of brass in his pocket. They don't ask you there if you came by your own honestly. Character is a cheap article, and reputation is put by in museums.

I sailed for America, and it was there that I wrote

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 these papers. They won't hurt Sir Nicolas Steele—and if they do, that's his business. Mine is to make the money while I can; but as for what the law can do to me, I don't care a snap of the fingers. So far as that goes, I doubt if there's much in our past that any judge could spout upon. All said and done, it's easy to be a rogue by Act of Parliament. If Nicky and I got our dues, we should have a statue all to ourselves on St. Stephen's Green, and our portraits would be hung in the Kerry town hall. But this is a short-sighted world, and it knows nothing of its greatest men.

It is a year ago since I left my master, and many things have happened since then—though none of them so odd as the events which led up to that parting. We had returned to Paris quietly enough after our fool's errand to Brittany, and there was no thought in our heads of any thing but a slow season and an unprofitable summer. Such of our friends as had been useful had gone their ways, some to Lon- don, some to America. There was no pigeon to pluck that I knew of; no Yankee who would buy diamonds. Sir Nicolas had little to do but drive and play with the old impecunious lot; and right well lie did it.

"While the money's left, be hanged to the care!" he would say; and for the matter of that, all the lifebelts in France couldn't have saved that same dull care when he set out to drown her. Time and again I told him that if nothing was to be done in

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 Paris, we might find work enough in Madrid or in Berlin. He wouldn't so much as listen to me.

"Is it a bagman I am?" he asked one day when I was harping on the old string again. "Must I be running round the country seeing who'll buy me wares? Indeed, and I'll stop where I am "

"Until the money is spent, sir," I hinted.

"A curse upon the money!" said he. "It's nothing but the money you think of the week through. Am I a pauper, then? And who's to put gold in me purse in Germany? Bedad! I'd as soon spend a week in the Mazas as in that same country. There was no gentleman ever came out of Germany—no, nor honest liquor either. I'd be dead in a week of their beef."

I did not answer him, for he never was a man you could persuade when he was in one of his tempers. He dined that night at the Hôtel Scribe with Jack Ames and his lot; and it was not until one o'clock in the morning that I saw him again. He was pretty well warmed up with the drink then, and directly he set eyes on me, he called out at the top of his lungs;

"Hildebrand, it's yourself I want and no other; fetch me the whiskey, and don't ye sing hymns on the way."

I got him the drink, and when he had pulled out a great handful of cigars and dropped half of them on the pavement, he burst out with his news.

"Man," said he, "it's fine intelligence I have for ye. We're to be in St. Petersburg in three days!"

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 slavery over the prevailing sentiment of the American people by the same tactics which is successfully employed for the next seventy years, is, for the first time, witnessed. Although our fathers were unable to abolish slavery at once, so great was the magnitude to which it had attained, and so deeply had it rooted itself in the interest of some of the southern colonies, still they expected that the northern states would continue to emancipate their slaves as some of them already had done, and by a prudential legislation to restrict slavery in the southern states, so that for the want of territory it would ultimately become extinct. But after the constitution had been framed, with an utter silence in regard to slavery, except a clause which contained an article against an immediate and absolute prohibition to importing negro slaves, the representatives of Georgia and South Carolina came forward and declared “that their constituents can never accede to a constitution containing such an article;” that if such a clause is retained they might regard these two States out of the Union. To obviate the objections of these two factious colonies, a compromise was effected, extending the slave trade franchise twenty years, with the implication that at the expiration of that time Congress might prohibit it. Encouraged by the success of their demand, they now make an humble request on the plea of equity, for the rendition of fugitive slaves from one state to another, as a kind of sugar-coat to the constitution for the tender stomachs of the southern colonies. The horror of slave-catching was not then realized by the northern states, the most of whom owned slaves,


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"Be where, sir?" I gasped, for I made sure that he was joking.

"In St. Petersburg, and nowhere else," replied he, holding the match about a foot away from his cigar—"in St. Petersburg, I'm telling ye. I've a fancy to see the Russians, and there's one of Jack Ames' lot that will take us through. It's an officer of the' Guards he is, and ye'll not forget to pack me yeomanry clothes, though the Queen—God bless her!— has dispensed with my services."

"Then it's certain that you are going, sir?" said I.

"As certain as the moon is round," cried he, "which is a geographical fact, Hildebrand."

What more he would have said I don't know, for he broke off sudden and went to bed,—which was the best place for him,—singing and swaggering like a trooper of the line. I thought at the time that he was telling me some whim of his cups; but when the morning came, he had still head enough to repeat the story and to remember that he had mentioned it.

"You'll not be forgetting that we leave by the Berlin mail to-night," said he. "It's all fixed up that we spend a fortnight in St. Petersburg as the guest of Count Uspensky. I've a wish to see the city, and the arrangement suits me finely. He's a big man there, and has big friends; and he's to have the charge of us. There would be more surprising things than that we should make money there. Ye'll not omit the uniform. It's a poor figure I'd cut in civilian clothes, don't you think?"

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I heard him out and then dressed him. You may be sure that I was pleased enough, since Paris was just stagnation then, and it was queer if something did not turn up in a new city and among new people. Little did I think, however, that this was the last journey Sir Nicolas Steele and I were to make together. Yet so it proved, as this story will tell you.

We arrived in St. Petersburg on a Wednesday morning, and by the following Saturday night I had learned enough Russian to bawl "Hisworshik" to a cabman and to get a glass of beer at a bar. The man whose guests we were took us to the Hôtel Klee; but I soon found that we were not to stop long in the city, he being about to set out for the house of one of his kinswomen, whose place was ten miles from Novgorod. And here let me say that Count Fédor Uspensky was never a friend to me, though I stood by him to the end of it. He was a cur right through; a swaggering, bullying, loud-mouthed swashbuckler that set my right arm itching every time he came near me. How it was that he made a friend of Nicolas Steele the Lord only knows. Yet friends they were from the first; and I don't think my master ever did so much for any man as he did for this little Russian captain, who was his host in St. Petersburg. It was a sight to see these two, just as different as chalk from cheese, walking arm- in-arm down the Nevski Prospekt, or ogling the women in Isaac's cathedral. Perhaps it was that each

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 after some modifications the clause is inserted without much opposition.

In 1789 South Carolina, who had continued to hold her land grants in the West, which covered the territory of the present State of Tennessee, ceded them to the United States on the condition among others “that no regulation made or to be made by Congress, shall tend to emancipate slaves.” The western territory held by Georgia, comprising the States of Alabama and Mississippi, was ceded to the Union in 1802, upon about the same condition. There was no alternative but to accept these cessions with their conditions. If the States held the lands, they would plant slavery there themselves, and thus increase their own greatness; and the United States could not secure the territory without the conditions.

Thus has slavery in the infant days of our Republic, by menaces and strategy triumphed over Congress and the will of the majority of our people.

The framers of our Constitution thought that they had laid a legislative coil which would sometime restrict the growth of slavery when they limited slave importation to twenty years; and they were no sanguinary visionists, but based their judgement upon the teachings of history. “In all former ages,” says Greeley in his “American Conflict:” “slavery so long as it existed and flourished, was kept alive by a constant or frequent enslavement of captives, or by importation of bondmen. Whenever that enslavement, that importation, closed, slavery began to decline.” But American slavery has set at naught the teachings of history and baffled the calculations of statesmen. The acquisition of Louisiana, thus opening a vast territory for the introduction of slaves, and the invention of the Cotton Gin, thus increasing the value of slave labor, rendered the commerce in human flesh as profitable as in the days of the African West India Company. Rapacious avarice unable longer to satisfy its greediness for gain by importation, invents a new system for multiplying human chattels. “Slave-breeding for gain, deliberately proposed


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 thought he would do the other; perhaps they fell together out of that odd sympathy which men who have known ups and downs show for each other. Any way, they were as thick as thieves; and little it was I saw of them during the five days we spent in the city.

This didn't matter to me, you may be sure. If ever there was a town to let a man play the fine gentleman, that town is St. Petersburg. The very breadth of the streets, the miles of palaces, the over-stocked shops, put a sense of gentility into you. Turn where you will, there are uniforms and pretty women to see. The whole city loves to kowtow to its great folks; even a gentleman's gentleman can find plenty to touch their hats to him and call him excellency. I lived like a fighting-cock the whole time I was there; and when the day came for us to move into the country, there was no man less pleased than I was. Nor did I understand, until Sir Nicolas told me, why we should move at all.

"It's this way," said he, speaking at bedtime on the last night we were at the Hôtel Klée—"there's a cousin of the count's to be married, and we're to go to the wedding with him. Rich people they are, let me tell you, the widow and daughter of Field-marshal Pouzatòv that was. The girl carried on with my friend a couple of years ago, and he's fretting to see the last of her. It wouldn't be decent to stand against this whim. We'll just have a week in the country, and there will be the end of it. Ye'll take

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 plenty of silver with us, for you can't look up to the sky in this cursed place without tossing a rouble to the angels."

He spoke light enough, but his talk would have been different if he had known the black thing we were to see at that very Novgorod, and the end of those three days in the country. He hadn't an inkling of it then, however, and I was no wiser, needless to tell. All I saw before us was a holiday in a Russian village; and while that was not much to look forward to, I remembered that a wedding might smarten things up a bit. "There'll be girls about," said I, "and plenty to eat and drink; and though the women here have got faces like frying-pans, I'll manage to put up with them for a day or two." And with this to keep my spirits up, I packed his bag again, and set off with him to Novgorod by the early morning train.

It was about half a day's journey from the city to Mme. Pouzatòv's place, and when we arrived at the station, there were two four-horse carriages—"chatevkas" they called them—waiting there to meet us. I saw at once, from the silver on the harness and the cut of the horses and men, that we'd come to a slap-up house; and by and by, when the count and Sir Nicolas had done bowing and scraping to the young lady who sat with another gentleman in the first carriage, I came to the conclusion that the people we were to stay with were the right sort. As for miss, she was the best imitation of a pretty girl I had seen

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 and systematically pursued, appears to be among the late devices and illustrations of human depravity. Neither Cowper nor Wesley, nor Jonathan Edwards, nor Granville Sharp, nor Clarkson, nor any of the philanthropists or divines, who, in the last century, bore fearless and emphatic testimony to the iniquity of slave-making, slave-holding and slave-selling seemed to have had any clear conception of it. For the infant slave of the past ages was rather an encumbrance and a burden, than a valuable addition to his master's stock. To raise him, however roughly, would cost all he would ultimately be worth. That it was cheaper to buy slaves than to rear them, was quite generally regarded as self-evident. But the suppression of the African slave-trade, coinciding with the rapid settlement of the Louisiana purchase, and the triumph of the Cotton-Gin, wrought here an entire transformation. When a field hand brought from ten to fifteen hundred dollars, and young negroes were held at about ten dollars per pound, the new born infant, if healthy, well formed, and likely to live, was deemed an addition to his master's wealth of not less than one hundred dollars even in Virginia or Maryland. It had now become the interest of the master to increase the number of births in his slave cabin; and few evinced scruples whereby this result was obtained. The chastity of female slaves was never deemed of much account, even where they were white; and, now that it had become an impediment to the increase of their master's wealth, it was wholly disregarded. No slave girl, however young, was valued lower for having become a mother, without waiting to be first made a wife; nor were many masters likely to rebuke this as a fault, or brand it as a shame. Women were publicly advertised as extraordinary breeders, and commanded a higher price on that account. Wives, sold in separation from their husbands, were imperatively required to accept new partners, in order that the fruitfulness of the plantation might not suffer.”


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 in Russia; and though I never had an eye for dark-haired women myself, I could not help but be struck by Marya Pouzatòv. It was as good as a glass of wine any day to see her laugh. She had those speaking black eyes which would make the fortune of the plainest woman alive. And chatter—I believe she talked from the minute we came out of the station until she pulled up the steaming horses at her own door.

I have said that the drive, from the great Moscow railway to the house where the wedding was to be, might be reckoned at an hour. It wasn't a pretty drive, for the country was as flat as a carpet, and what trees I saw were pines in square-cut clumps. We passed a few ragged peasants on the dusty road, and met a priest going to market; but for right down loneliness and desolation send me to the Czar's dominions, and I'll never ask to see any thing worse. I was glad enough when the house came in sight at last—a long white building for all the world like three or four bungalows planked down together. There was an attempt at a bit of garden round about it, and what the people would have called a park beyond that; but it was not until you were inside the house that the means of the lady who kept it were displayed; and that they were first-class I never had a doubt. It was a mansion fit for an English nobleman; and many's the nobleman's place I've been into that wasn't a patch upon it. As for Sir Nicolas, he was beside himself from the start, and when I took

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 him up his hot water for dinner, he could do nothing but talk about it.

"’Tis beautiful quarters we've found, entirely," said he, "and pretty people. I don't suppose ye've much to say about the money here. Faith, I'm beginning to wish I was the general myself. There's twenty thousand goes with the girl, the count tells me, and the reversion of the place. It's many qualities in a wife I could dispense with at a price like that."

"So she's to marry a general, sir?" asked I.

"No one else," said he, "but General Stolitzoff, that was against Osman Pacha before Plevna. A great man, with as many medals on his coat as I have buttons,"

"He wouldn't be young, sir?" I suggested.

"He would be fifty-five, I'm told, and young at that. It was her father's wish on his death-bed that she should have him; but she leads him the devil's own dance, from all I hear. Truth, she's a very sweet little woman—and then there's the money."

"Is the wedding soon, sir?" I asked.

"It's for to-day week, but we'll have a gay time between. They dance to-morrow when the general comes from Novgorod—lucky devil that he is!"

After this, one did not want to be very clever to learn how the land lay with him. I believe he was in love with Marya Pouzatòv from the start; and it's no wonder if he was. A daintier little thing never stepped out of a drawing-room than the girl I saw go

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 in to dinner that night. It was as good as a play to watch him and the count running after her like lap-dogs, now one, now the other dancing attendance on her, and pluming himself that his was the winning hand. Her sweetheart, you must know, was still away at Novgorod, where his regiment was, and the other two did their best to console her. Not that she wanted much of that sort of thing, for a wickeder little flirt never lived, as Sir Nicolas Steele may have found out by this time. But they weren't behindhand in giving her the lead, as the Irishman would say; and the way the three of them went it was a thing to remember.

This, I must tell you, was on the first night of our arrival at Mme. Pouzatòv's house. They had put me in a good room in the servants' quarters, but I was out in the gardens all dinner-time, and little went on that I did not know about. Not that I found my company dull, for the place was chock-full of servants, and though I didn't understand a word of the lingo, I made myself at home like one o'clock. There's a power of language in the squeeze of a pretty woman's hand, and a kiss on a dark staircase is worth a mint of "parlez-vous" any day. I found myself all the better with the "frying-pans" for want of their chatter; and twenty-four hours hadn't passed before I was best man with the lot of them. Nevertheless, my chief business was to keep my eye on Nicky; and all the pretty housemaids in Russia would not have held me from that.

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It was this last consideration which led me, on the night after our arrival, to offer my help to the others who were waiting and serving at the grand ball given to the general and the bridegroom that was to be. I had determined that I would see all that was to be seen; and when I had dressed Sir Nicolas, I found it useful to hang about the corridors and the entrance to the ballroom. In this way I had a good view of the old general himself when he arrived about eight o'clock—a fine, noble-looking old fellow, who carried his years like feathers, and had kindness and courage written all over his splendid face. I thought at the time that Miss Marya didn't exactly burst into tears when she saw him; and this I will say now, that she, and she alone, was responsible for all that happened that night, and afterward. She gave him the cold-shoulder from the start of it; she danced three times running with the count, and twice with Sir Nicolas. I don't believe she spoke five words to her intended from the time he arrived until the doors of the dining-room were thrown open for supper. You could see with half an eye that a storm was brewing, and burst it did with a vengeance not ten minutes after midnight had struck.

Up to this time the general had kept his temper like a man. In all that great ballroom, sparkling with lights, and jewels, and wonderful gowns and dazzling uniforms, there was no finer fellow than he. While swaggering Guards in snow-white tunics clustered round him, and Cossacks aired their splendid

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 coats, and little whipper-snappers danced about all sprinkled over with gold and jewels, he was the man of the evening. Upright, a good six feet in his shoes, wearing a dark-green uniform that fitted his figure like a glove, there was always a kindly smile about his eyes, and a manliness in his bearing which did you good to see. Not once in that long evening did he betray himself by look or gesture. Even when the girl he was to marry passed him on another man's arm, and gave him one of her impudent nods, he merely bowed to her and went on smiling. Only when supper-time came did he push himself forward at all—and then it was to offer her his arm that he might take her into the dining-room.

Now, in the scene that followed, whether the girl acted as she did because she disliked the man, or whether it was pure devilry on her part, I have never been able to convince myself. All I can say is that when the general stepped up to Marya and offered her his arm, she turned away from him to the count; and so the two men were face to face almost at the doorway where I stood.

I write that they were face to face, the old man still smiling, the young one hot with anger and with excitement. But it was the count who spoke first, and in French, as all the folks in the ballroom did that night.

"I am sorry, general," said he, bowing with a sneering politeness which made you mad to see, "but mademoiselle is pledged to me for supper."

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"Indeed," said the other, "and by what right, monsieur?"

"Oh, that is a question I should not discuss here!"

"Nor I," replied the general, speaking low and bending down toward him. In the same moment I saw the old fellow flick the count on the right cheek with his glove. Five minutes later his carriage was taking him back to Novgorod.

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 is no need for me to tell you all that followed this bitter little scene. It was just as though you had opened the windows of the ballroom and let in the falling snow. While not more than ten people had witnessed the mishap, the story of it was round the house before half an hour had passed. It broke up the ball like a death might have done. I saw Mme. Pouzatòv herself being led up to her bedroom. Her daughter still carried on defiantly with the count, but it was plain that she was scared and half sorry. The others made haste to call their carriages, or formed little groups to discuss the thing with gesture. The servants crept about like mutes at a funeral. We all knew that the night could end but in one way. The men must fight.

It was broad daylight that morning before any of us got to bed. As for myself, I don't believe I took my clothes off. Not that I cared a penny piece whether the general shot the count, or the count shot the general; but there was so much excitement and talk and running here and there, that sleep was far from my eyes. And so it was with my master.

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 I went to his bedroom at eight o'clock, and found him still in his uniform, sitting at his writing-table and drinking coffee. Though he spoke careless enough, you could see that he was shaking to his finger-tips with excitement; and after I'd heard him out, I knew well where he came into it.

"Hildebrand," said he, "I'm to drive to Novgorod in an hour. The count has asked me to act for him."

"Then they are to meet, sir?" said I.

"Was any other course possible?" cried he. "’Tis not with bank-clerks or bishops that we're dealing, but with gentlemen that have gentlemen's means for their quarrels!"

"But the general is his superior officer; the count can't fight with him, sir—at least, that's the talk below."

"Which is nonsense, ye may tell them from me. 'Tis a case where we'll have to get permission from the authorities, and that will not be refused. Sure, the lady is likely to be looking for a husband when the week is gone."

"What about the count in that case, sir?"

He looked at me slyly, as he could sometimes.

"I doubt that she'll marry the count," said he, and that was all.

That was all, but if he thought that I did not read up the rest, he must have taken me for a fool. "Nicky," said I to myself, "you're playing for your own hand. She won't marry the general now, any way. If he shoots the count, you're alone in the

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 field. And there's twenty thousand goes with her, so you might do worse than that."

It was a new idea to me entirely; and I must say that it stuck in my head all that morning, and was still there when he, and the two that had been with him, came home from Novgorod about six in the evening. The day had been a miserable one, wet and cold and chill; the house was quiet as the grave. Not once, the whole morning through, did I see Miss M&rya or her mother. The guests who had remained overnight went away after breakfast. The only conversation was the question whether the count would kill the general, or the general kill the count. And I, who had not cared a snap the day before, found myself as busy thinking about it as the rest of them. For if the count fell—Sir Nicolas would stay in Russia. I would have staked my life upon that. '

My master came home at six o'clock, as I have said; and his first words to me told what he had done.

"I have a case of pistols in my bag," said he, "and I would be glad to know if they're to be trusted. You may amuse yourself for ten minutes knocking the bark off the trees with them."

"Then it's pistols they've chosen, sir?"

"’Tis so, and the old Muscovite conditions—fifteen paces, and a line to come up to. You'll be ready to leave with me at dawn."

"Do you drive far, sir?"

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"Four miles to the woods we passed in the carriage on the road here. The count goes with us. Whether he'll return, God only knows. I'm thinking that he won't."

I didn't say so to him, but I knew that if ever the wish was father to the thought, here was the time. Only let the count go down in the morning, and the field was open to him. What would happen if it turned out the other way, I could not think. But I had a suspicion that, even then, Sir Nicolas was the only one who would get any thing by the move; and I wasn't far wrong, as you will learn presently.

The meeting had been fixed for dawn, as you have heard; but the fact was kept close by those who took the lead, and I don't believe that Mme. Pouzatòv or her daughter knew a word about it. As for the count, he had spent the day in the house of the village priest; and I saw nothing of him until dinner was over, and I was out in the park trying the pistols which Sir Nicolas had given to me. At that time the other must have been coming up to our place to see his seconds, for I found him all at once standing beside me and watching my work curiously.

"Comment, mon ami," said he, "you have quarrelled with the trees, then?"

"That's it, sir," said I. "Let's hope there won't be more damage done to-morrow morning than there is to-night."

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At this he laughed, rather savagely I thought, for he was most bitter to the general all through it, perhaps because he was a devil at heart, perhaps because he really did feel strong about the woman.

"Sacré nom d'un nom!" he went on presently, "that would not please me. He has smacked me with his glove. I will return it to him round a bullet. Let me have the pistol in my hand a moment."

He took it up, for I had loaded it, and aimed it at the nearest tree. I could have laughed when he did not even touch the bark.

"Halloa, sir!" said I, "that won't do in the morning. He's a big man, is the general; but he hasn't quite got the girth of that tree."

"The devil take him, no," said he; "but he will die, nevertheless"—and with this he turned on his heel and went swaggering off to the great house like the dirty swashbuckler he was,

"Go on, my man," said I; "but if it isn't your corpse I put in the carriage to-morrow morning, write me down a tenderfoot. He'll shoot you like a dog, and you deserve it too."

I must say that I could see no other end to it. The general was a notorious pistol-shot; this man did not appear able to hit a cow at ten yards. It occurred to me at the time that Nicky knew of this when he egged him on so hard to refuse an apology, as I heard afterward that he did. Be that as it may, I went to bed saying to myself that Count Fédor Uspensky

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 was as good as a dead man; and I got up, half an hour before dawn, precisely of the same opinion.

It was a bitter morning, dark and cold and stormy. The east wind whistled through the pines in a way most dismal to hear. There was a shower of biting sleet just as we started which almost took pieces out of our faces. We all drank cups of steaming coffee and plenty of brandy with that, wrapping ourselves up just like men going out to sing carols. It had been agreed that, we should pick up the count as we drove through the village. Sir Nicolas and I were alone in the four-horse carriage which Mme. Pouzatòv had lent to us, on the understanding that we were driving into Novgorod to smooth down all the trouble. I felt like a man going to a funeral, and I don't think my master was much better,

"Well," said he, when we turned from the park out upon the bare and lonely high-road to Novgorod, "which of them, I wonder, will live to speak of this morning."

"Both, I hope, sir," said I, "Any way, they should do, if the general can't shoot any better than our man."

"’Tis not that at all," replied he, lighting a cigar, and shivering even in his thick coat—"’tis not that at all, but a very bloody business, this same Russian duelling. Ye'll understand that they fire when they please after the word is given, and that if either man takes a step forward toward the centre line, the other

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 man must do the same. Bedad! it might be plain murder, aud nothing less."

"What if they both fire up in the air, sir?" said I.

"’T would be a miracle," cried he; and just then we drove up to the house of the priest, and the count got into the carriage.

He was wrapped up as we were, a heavy military coat covering nearly the whole of his uniform. I could see that he had been priming himself up with drink, and he spoke like a man acting a wild part. Indeed, to hear him you might have thought that there was no such dare-devil in all Europe; while what he said about the general wasn't fit for the ears of a dog. When we were sick of his boasting—and that was soon—he fell to singing snatches of French songs, bawling, "Nous, nous marierons dimanche," by which I took it that he really meant seriously by the girl who had brought all the trouble. And I was precious glad at last when the carriage turned from the high-road into the woods, and it was time for us to get out.

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 shown in the history of Massachusetts, Virginia, Georgia, New York, New England States, and South Carolina; The Declaratron of Indeperdence embodies the sentiments of the People in regard to Slavery; Suppressed Artile; Action of Continental Congress against it; Effort in 1784 to Prohibit Slav:ry from the Territories of the United States; Prohibition of 1787; Slavery Triumph in the Constitutional Convention; South Carolina and Georgia Cede their Territory to the Union on Conditions; Slave Trade followed by Slave Breeding............ 38-46

TRIUMPH OF SLAVERY IN 1820-Missouri Petitions Congress for Admission; Referred to a Committee; Report not acted upon that Session; Petition renewed at next Session; Slavery Restriction Introduced; Bill Lost; Arkansas Territory Organized; Magnitude of the Missouri Question; Popular Excitement during the Summer; Position and Arguments of the two Parties; The Sixteenth Congress; The Missouri Question Engages its Attention: Mr. Taylor's Amendment; The Stormy Debate; Its Character; Selections from the Speech of Mr. Otis, o' Mr. Barbour, and others, Mr. Thomas' Amendment; The Vo:e;'I he two Houses Disagree; The Committee of Conference; The Compromise; Missouri forms a Constitution; Objectionable to Congress; Admitted upon Conditions; She Complies with Them.................................................. 46-56

TRIUMPH OF SLAVERY IN TIIE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS.- Question about the Boundaries of Louisiana,; Treaty, ith Spain; A Southern Move; oiexico Gains her Independence; Texas Colonized-Rfvolts and Asks to be Annexed to the United States; The Annexation and Provisions; Opposition to the Annexation; President's Proposition to Congress to Satisfy Mexico with Money; Question as to the Character of Labor in tne Territory; Wilmot Proviso —Lost; Popular Sovereignty First Einunciated-Not Popular; Attempt to Organize the Terri, tory; Resumed in 1850; Slavery Holds the Missouri Compromise Sacred; Compromise; Wnat the South Gained................ 66-63

KANSAS.NEBRASKA ACT-SLAVERY TRIUMrPH-Relation of Both Parties to the Missouri Compromise; Its fir.:t Infraction in 1836; Petitions for Organizing Territory West of Missouri; Opposition of the South; Bill tor Its Organization in the 33d Congress; Validity oftthe Missouri Compromise First Questioned; Plighted Faith; S A. Douglas at First Startles but Resolves not to be Outbid; His Kansas-Nebrask Bill; Position of the Two Parties; Motion of Mr. Douglas; Mr. Chase's Motion Mr. Badger's Motion; Mr. Clayton's Motion; Mr. Chase's Pioposition; Bill Passes the Senate; Bill in the House; Parliamentary Maneuver of Hon. A HE Stephens; Bill Forced Through; Congressional Globe; Bill in the Senate; Atchison's Speech; Signed by the President; Design of Organizing Two Territories................................................................................ 64- 72.


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AN ACT TO ORGANIZE THE TERRITORY OF KANSAS.......................... 74-86

ANTIQUITIIES OF KANSAS-Kansa., Antiquities not remote; be Name; Discovered in 1705; Explored it 1719; Spanish Expedition and Battle in 1720; 1'ie French Eistahlish a Fort on rte Missouri: Expedition of Louis and Clar a; First Steamboat up the Missouri: The Fnr Trade; Sant:t Fe Tra'de; Indians Troubhle the Trairn; Coerncil Gro'e; 0 lttriti Posts; Mag nitude of th-i Tr'ad.; For: Lai'veaoritb; Rtmoval of the [ndians from the Ea^t; Fort Scott; Fritmont; Trains Acrss to the Pacific; The Border in thtOe iexican Wsar &nd Gold Excitement in California; Description of Prairie Commerce.... 87-95

A SURVEY OF THF BATTLIR " IELD AND TlE CONTESTANTrS BEFORE THE CONFLICT-.Kansas Regarded as a Barren \Wase; Better known after California Emrigratiou; People of Missouri; Slavery and Kansas Territory; Atchison's Speech; Character of the People on the Border; EItdect of Atchison'Y Speech; His Biography; Feeling of the People af er the Repea! of the Missouri Corn,:romise; Feeling of the Free Stati; Determined to Contest its Settlement; Advantages on the Side of Slavery............... 96-105

PRO-SLAVERY, EMIGRATION, AND EMGRANT InD SOCIFTIFE —Emigrea tion from Missouri; Politicians hold Sqnalter Neeti'gs; R.soIftions of the First Convention in Kansas; hbolitiouists; Founding of Leavenworth; Of Atchison; Free State Men niot Idle; eal ot e Pres; Organization of Aid Societies; New Eng nT5~'"imirgrnti Aid Society; Its I)esign, Car:.icter. and Mode of Operatiug; Emigrant Aid Company of New York and Cincinna'i; Union Emigratin Society; Their Primary Object; Not Mlleg:I r nor Dhoorable...................... 106-115

FREE STATE EMIGRATIGN, HOSTILE PREPARATIONS, AND T1E BFCGTNNING OF DIFFICULTIES - Free State Settlers; Disturbed by MRissourians; Squatter Government;, H Branscomb; Firt vet tlement of Lawrence; Of Topeka; MGnhattan; Grasshopper Fall'; What the Emigrant Aid Societies Did, and Especially the New England; The Border- Alarmled; Platte Argus; The Passions of the Border M5en Excited; Resolutions at Border Meetings; Reward Offered for Eli Thayer; Threats Twards A. Guthrle; Platte County Self.Defensive Association; Remarks of the Border Chiefs; Lives and Characters of the Stringfellows; Missouri Secret Societies; Real and Avowed Causes of their Formation; Self Defensives Seize T. A. Minsrd and an O'd Citizen; Arraign Rev. F. Starr; Seek to Control Trede; Citizens Prntest Against Them; They Remove their Headquarters from Weston; First Invasion of Lawrence.................. 116-130


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 Then came the announcement of Doris’s engagement to Geoffrey Dennison. Doris, at eighteen, was making quite a good marriage, and she was twenty-five and single. Supposing she did not marry at all? That season the only person who had proposed to her was a boy of twenty who was still at Oxford: she couldn’t marry a boy five years younger than herself. She had made a hash of things. Last year she had refused a widowed Knight of the Bath with three children. She almost wished she hadn’t. Mother would be horrible now, and Doris, Doris who had always been sacrificed because she, Kitty, was expected to make the brilliant match, would not fail to crow over her. Kitty’s heart sank.

UT one afternoon when she was walking home from Harrod’s she chanced to meet Walter Fane in the Brompton Road. He stopped and talked to her. Then, casually, he asked her if she would not take a turn with him in the Park. She had no particular wish to go home; it was not just then a very agreeable place. They strolled along, talking as they always talked, of casual things, and he asked her where she was going for the summer.

“Oh, we always bury ourselves in the country. You see, father is exhausted after the term’s work and we just go to the quietest place we can find.”

Kitty spoke with her tongue in her cheek, for she knew quite well that her father had not nearly


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 CHAPTER1 XIi.-1854.

INAUGURATION OF GOVERNMENT-NO Government for four months, but all was orderly; Territorial Officers Appointed; Biography of Governor Reeder; His Arrival at Leavenworth; Tour through the Territory; Proclamation for Election, not Palatable to Pro-slavery Men The Convention at Leavenworth; Its Correspondence with Governor Reeder; The Candidaate for 1)eiegate to Congress; Slavery not an Issue; TheElec Frauds; Snmmary of the Returns; J. W. Whitfild Eected; Popular Sovereignty Exemplified; Courts Opened................. 131-137

CHAPTER X III-1855.

ELECTING TERRITORIAL LEGISLATURE -Mild Winter; Census Taken; Returns; Anecdote; Disaffection of Pro-Slavery Men; Proclamration for an Elec:tion of Territorial Legislature; Slavery Made the Issue; Preparations in Missouri; Invasion of the I'erritory and Stuffing Ballotboxes; At Lawrence; Bloomingto; Sixteenth District; Eighteenth; Abstract of Election Returns; Excuse for Illegal Voting; The Emigrant Aid Societies Took no Part in the Election; Free State did not all Vote; A Fair and Full Vote Would Have Given a Free State Majority; Testimony of the City Attorney of St. Joseph; On Demand of Members Elect Governor Reeder Issues Certificates, Except in Six Districts; Protests; Pro Slavery Men Incensed; Refuse to Participate in the New Election........................... 138-153

CHAPTER XIV-1855.

THE CONSEQurENcE —Feelings of Free State Men; Their Demeanor; Rejoicing on the Borlrer; "Squatter Sovereign" Advises Extermination; A Convention to Intimidate Reeder; Destruction ot " Parkville Luminary "; Warning to Methodist Preachers; Mee tings' t Wes.ton and Liberty; Murder of Clark; McCrea's Escape; Pro-Slavery Men Enraged; Notify Mr. Phillips to jLeae; Another Meeting; Vigilance Committee Appointed; Phillips Carried to Weston, Tarred and Feathered, and otherwise Qutraged; The Action Endorsed by a Public Meeting; Diffeience in the Manners of Free Ltate Men and ProSlavery M en................................................................... 154-158

CHAPTER XV-1855.

TERRITORIAL LEGISLATURE-Governor Reeder Goes to Washington; President Urges Him to Resign-But They Cannot Agree Upon the Terms of Correspondence Grounding His Resignation; Other Positions Offered Mr. Reeder; He Returns to the Ter-ntory Feeling Insulted; Territorial Legislature Assembles at Pawnee; Both Houses Purge Themselves of the Free State Element; Report of Committee on Credentials in the House-Minority Report; Protest of the Ousted Members; Motion of Judge Wakefield in Council; Colonel Coffey's Response to Wakefield's Interrogation; Report of Committee on Credentials; Protest of Free State Members; Move the Temporary Seat of Government to Shawnee Manual Labor School Over


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 enough work to tire him and even if he had his convenience would never have been consulted in the choice of a holiday. But a quiet place was a cheap place.

“Don’t you think those chairs look rather inviting?” said Walter suddenly.

She followed his eyes and saw two green chairs by themselves under a tree on the grass.

“Let us sit in them,” she said.

But when they were seated he seemed to grow strangely abstracted. He was an odd creature. She chattered on, however, gaily enough and wondered why he had asked her to walk with him in the Park. Perhaps he was going to confide in her his passion for the flat-footed nurse in Hong-Kong. Suddenly he turned to her, interrupting her in the middle of a sentence, so that she could not but see that he had not been listening, and his face was chalk white.

“I want to say something to you.”

She looked at him quickly and she saw that his eyes were filled with a painful anxiety. His voice was strained, low and not quite steady. But before she could ask herself what this agitation meant he spoke again.

“I want to ask you if you’ll marry me.”

“You could knock me down with a feather,” she answered so surprised that she looked at him blankly.

“Didn’t you know I was awfully in love with you?”

“You never showed it.”

“I’m very awkward and clumsy. I always find it


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 duel, as I have stated above, was to be fought under conditions common years ago in the Russian army, but rarely heard of to-day outside Muscovy. As the right understanding of these conditions is necessary to my story, I will say a word here about them. For the matter of that, they are simple enough for a child to follow. You place your men fifteen paces apart, and you draw a centre line seven and a half paces from each man. At the word "fire," it is open to either party to shoot or to keep his charge and advance toward the centre line. But when he advances his opponent must advance; so that, given a couple who really meant business, you might find them shooting each other at arm's length. There is nothing in the code to prevent this; nothing but a man's natural sense of right and fair play. It has been done times without number; it will be done again, so long as men leap at each other's throats for a word, or cross swords for a look from a woman's eyes.

I have given this explanation that you may follow me rightly in what I have to say about this particular

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 meeting—the only duel I ever saw fought out, and the only one I want to see. When we arrived on the ground, our other second, who had driven over from Novgorod, was already measuring the fifteen paces. They had driven a stake into the turf to mark the centre line; and, as for the place chosen, it could not have been better. It was just a natural bit of lawn in the midst of the pine thickets; a little clearing so thick set round with woods that an army might have tramped the high-road and have known nothing of what we were doing. The general himself was al- ready there when we arrived, looking spick and span in his tight-fitting uniform, and having a bow and a smile for every one—even for the count. The surgeon, one from the barracks in the town, was busy chattering like a barber, and offering his brandy-flask to all who would like a nip out of it. As for the others—the general's seconds and our own—they were as busy as bees, and a thundering sight more important. You might have thought they were surveying the ground for a new railway, so carefully did they go over it with their tapes and rules; and it was not until a good twenty minutes had passed that one of them cried, "Gentlemen, we are ready," and I knew that the great play was about to begin.

I call it a great play; but, God knows, my heart was in my mouth—then and until the end of it. It's an awful thing to look upon two men, full of life and health and strength, and to think that one of them may lie in his blood, to die where he falls, before

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 another minute has passed away. I can remember to this hour how my hands shook as I took the pistols out of the case and handed them to my master; I can remember what a strange stillness fell upon us all as the men took up their positions in the silence and the darkness of that gloomy morning. Even the doctor ceased his chatter and his jokes, and shut with a snap the case of instruments he had opened so briskly a moment before. It was as though we were already in the presence of death, and that the awe of death had come upon us.

"Gentlemen, are you quite ready?"

My master put the question in French, and hearing it, I glanced quickly at the two who faced each other. The count, I thought, had a look of bitter hate upon his face; the general was still smiling as blandly as a child. I could hear my heart beating like a pump as I watched them and waited for the word, which seemed a year in coming.

"Gentlemen," my master went on presently, "if you are quite ready"—here he paused—"if you are quite ready, then fire." At this word, he stepped back a pace and I saw him bite his lip in his anxiety. One of the pistols sent a thundering report through the woods almost as the word was given; but no man fell. The general had fired deliberately at the sky, and stood now with folded arms to wait the count's pleasure.

Good God! I have lived that moment a hundred times since that day. An unarmed man, waiting for

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 the deliberate aim of a murderer who would have torn him limb from limb if he could! For that was the position—the old man still with that sweet smile upon his face, the young man toying with his pistol and looking like a madman or a devil. So awful was the suspense that I even heard one of the seconds cry, "For God's sake, fire!" And to this cry another of rage and horror was added a minute later, when every man saw that, instead of firing, the count had taken one deliberate step to the centre line, and that the general had imitated him.

"God of heaven!" roared the doctor at this, "is he going to shoot him like a dog, then?"

The words were still upon his lips when the count took another stride forward. I thought for a moment that the seconds would intervene. I believe to this day that they would have done, if Sir Nicolas had not cried out suddenly, "We can do nothing; he is within his right." Once this was said, the old silence fell upon us—upon all but the doctor, who turned his back upon the scene and burst out crying like a woman. And step by step, slowly, deliberately, with all the malice of a devil's heart, the murderer advanced to his work.

They were within two yards of each other at last; yet even then I could not bring myself to think that those about me would stand by and see such a cruel thing. "The count is just torturing the poor old man," I thought; "he will bring him to the centre and then fire up in the air." This opinion was

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 shared by the others, I make sure. Either that, or they were paralyzed—fascinated like a dumb thing is by a tiger. Once they had cried out, not a man spoke. Silently, with faces flushed, their heads bent forward, they watched the meeting as the two came together at last, face to face, almost heart to heart.

"My God! it cannot be; he does not mean it. It's a play—he does not want his life."

I could not keep the words back as the two men met, and stood for one awful minute on the line together. The general's face was still a beautiful thing to see; the count continued to bend forward, holding his pistol at his side. Not a word was spoken on either side, not a gesture made; they stood there like two statues until, suddenly and horribly, the end came. Whether the count really meant to do as he did, whether it was a devilish impulse, I do not know to this day. Be that as it may, the two were standing as I have described them when, all at once, there was a shrill scream—a woman's scream—from the little thicket near by us. One short suppressed exclamation it was; yet enough to cause the general to turn quickly upon his heel; and in the same moment the count raised his pistol and fired. He had pressed the muzzle hard against the other's breast; he shot him like he would have shot a hound. With one awful ringing cry—a cry that sent the birds screaming from the trees, and echoed again and again in the woods—the old man

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 fell his length upon the grass; and smoke and blood poured together from his gaping wound.

That he was stone dead, that he died as he fell, I did not want any doctor to tell me. As the thing went, I don't believe a man of the party moved for more than a minute after that dreadful deed. We were rooted to the ground, held stiff as much with shame as with sorrow. Even the count made no attempt to leave the clearing; he simply stood there with a sneer on his livid face and the smoking pistol swinging in his hand. If Sir Nicolas—who was the first to throw off the spell—had not pulled him away into the wood, he would have held his ground until one of the others had shot him where he stood; as I am sure they would have done if shame had not held their hands. But my master grasped the situation before they had moved from their places, and beckoning me to follow him, he entered the nearest thicket and disappeared from our view. When I found him two minutes later, he was returning to the clearing with a fainting woman in his arms. It was Marya Pouzatòv, who had witnessed the whole scene from the woods.

"For God's sake, look after the count!" said he; "they will cut him in pieces. Get him back to the village, and run all the way. Ye've not a minute to lose, if ye'd save more bloodshed."

With this he ran on, carrying the fainting girl to the doctor, who was still standing beside the dead body of the old soldier. You may imagine that I

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 didn't lose much time in doing as he had told me; and I was out on the road with Count Fédor while you could add up ten. I found him dazed and muttering, and more like a lunatic than a man. "He laughed in my face," was all he could say—"he laughed in my face, and struck me, the dog!"

"That's all very well," said I; and I could have hit him willing, myself. "I hope you're pleased with yourself. If you want to save your dirty life now, keep your mouth shut and come along with me."

"They cannot touch me," said he fiercely, between his teeth. "I was within my right! There is nothing against my honor."

"Your honor be dd!" said I, "and you, too, for that matter. Run, you pig of a Russian, run!"

They say we do queer things on the impulse; and I am certain that it was impulse alone which made Sir Nicolas lift a finger to save such a bad one as the count proved himself on that day. Possibly he had other plans at the moment; possibly he didn't see his way clear with two men dead on the field. And what he thought, I thought, too, in my own way. There had been trouble enough for one morning, and no good could follow a second dose of it. The dirty murderer I was running with was in one way our man. It lay upon me to stand by him—until he was clear of the ground, any way. And stand by him I did, never halting a minute the whole three miles back to the village and to the priest's house. When I left him at last, he was splashed from head to foot

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 the Governor's Veto; Design of Calling Legislature at Pawnee; Legislature at Shawnee Mission Frames a Code of Laws; Their Oppressive Features; Governor Refuses to Recognize Them as a Legal Body; They Consult the Supreme Court of the Territory Which Renders a Judgment in Their Favor; Legislature Memorialize the President for Mr. Reeder's Removal; Mr. Reeder Removed.................................................... 158-167

CHAPTER XVI-1855.

CAUSES OF REEDER'S REMOVAL CoNSIDERED-Causes; Pawnee; Reeder Interested;,eff. Davis Orders the Removal of the Inhabit.:i-its; Orders not Observed Until the Fall of 1855-When it is Car-ied Out; Half Breed Kaw Lands; Reeder's Speculation No Speculation At All; Governor Reeder's Career Praise Worthy; Members of Legislature Attend to Their Own Interest; Complaints of Their Conatituents; Hon. Wilson Shannon Appointed Governor; His Biography; A. Copy of the Laws Punishing Offenses Against Slave Property................ 168-176

CHAPTER XVII-1855.

FREE STATE MOVEMENTS-Oppression of Free State Men; They Pe. tition in Vain; Determine to Protect Themselves by Peaceable Means First; Convention at Lawrence on the 8th of June; National Democratic on the 27th; Free State: en on the 11th of July; Mass Convention on the 14th of August; The Union Mass Convention on the 15th takes Preliminary Steps for a Constitutional Convention; Organization of the Free State Party; Platform; Very (:onservative; Reasons; Report of Committee on State Organization; On Legislative Matters of the Territory; Provides for Election of Delegate to Congress; Reeder Defended from Charges and Nominated; Judge Smith's Speech; Reeder's Response; Topeka Delegate Convention 19th of September; Its Resolutions......................... 177-189

CHAPTER XVIII-1855.

FaRE STATE MOVEMENTS-Continued-People's Proclamation: Call for an election of Delegates to Constitutional Convention; The Absorbing Topic Discussed; Election of Delegates to Congress; An Amusing Incident; Topeka Constitutional Convention; Character of the Body; Vote on Striking Out "White;" On Approving Squatter Sovereignty: Excluding Free Negroes; The Constitution; Signers, their Occupation, &c. 190-199

CHAPTER XIX-1855

VARIOUS EVENES- t ate Emigrati Improvements; Poor Class of New Emigrants nse; Secretary Woodson; Convention at Lexington, Missouri, of Border Chiefs; Secret Organization; Kansas Legion; Pat. Laughlan's Expose; Efforts to Involve Free State Men in Legal Difficulties; Pojicy of Free tate-Men, especially at Lawrence; Another Secret' OtgniTzation; Its Character and Object; Outrage at Atchison on J. W. B. Kelley; Resolutions; Rev. Pardee Butler sent


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 with mud, and his face was as white as the paper I am writing on.

"You'll not leave me!" cried he, as I left him. "By Heaven, I'll want all the friends I can get this time to-morrow. They'll tear me in pieces—they'll hunt me like a dog"

"You should have thought of that before," said I.

"I never meant to shoot him, I swear it!" said he, staggering into the house. "It was the girl's voice that made me—the she-devil that has played with me for five years, and brought me to this at last. Oh, my God! I'm a doomed man."

He went in with this on his lips, and I turned back to meet Sir Nicolas. The bells of the horses in his carriage were already jangling in the village street; and, presently, I saw my master with his Marya, coming along at full gallop. He did not stop even when he caught sight of me, but drove on straight to the great house, where I followed him as fast as my legs would carry me. I found him doing his best to make things look well to Mme. Pouzatòv, and already taking almost a master's place in the house. But he came to me at once when I arrived; and the first name that passed his lips was the name of the count.

"’Tis a paltry murdering villain he is, and nothing else," said he, drawing me aside in the garden; "but we must stand by him, or there'll be bad talk."

"You don't mean to say that you'll keep him in the village there?" cried I.

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He looked at me cunningly, and there was the old sly twinkle in his eyes.

"Not exactly that," said he; "not in the village, nor in the town—nor in Russia."

I began to see his drift, and I could have laughed myself. He knew well that dead men are forgiven quickly. But with the count hounded out of the country, the coast would be clear for him.

"You think, then, that he will go, sir?" I asked.

"He will go in half an hour," he answered quietly, "unless he has a fancy for the bullets of the general's men. They will tear him limb from limb, and not lose much time in the employment. You may look for some of them from Novgorod before the sun sets. And that brings me to the point of it. It is yourself that will see him through to Paris. I've ordered the carriage to be at the priest's house in ten minutes from this time. You will hide him in the bottom of it, and drive to Malo, which is a station on the great Moscow railway. Once you have him in the train, lie is safe. But any way, don't return here, for I'd keep what happens from Miss Marya's ears, at all costs."

"Then I'm to go back to our hotel, sir, whatever happens?"

"Whatever happens," said he; "though I have me doubts that ye'll get through with him."

He said no more beyond finding me money for the journey, and we parted without a handshake. I have always regretted that, for it was the last time I saw

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 Sir Nicolas Steele. Twenty minutes after I had left him, I was in the chatevka with the count, and we were driving like madmen to Malo. There was no need for him to hide himself in the bottom of the carriage, as my master had wished, for the road was as lonely and as flat as a desert; and I do believe that we did not see a human being until the station came in sight. As for the count, he never spoke a word the whole way, but lay fuddled with drink and half-sleeping on the rugs which I had spread for him. When I woke him at last, he hardly seemed to know where he was; and he laughed at all my requests that he should keep himself out of sight while he could.

"Hide myself," said he; "and for what? Because I have shot a man who struck me in the face? Bah, I would do the same for him to-morrow, and for his friends too!"

I was not going to trouble myself to argue with him; and truth to tell, there did not appear to be any thing to fear. The platform of the station Mas deserted, save for a pompous-looking man in a gold-braided hat. Outside there were only a couple of old women selling tea, and a bit of a youth skylarking with them. I left my man in perfect confidence while I went to get the tickets; and when I returned to the waiting-room, he was still sitting on the seat where I had left him. It was only when I came quite close to him that I saw how queer his eyes looked, and how stiff his attitude was.

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 afloat on the Missouri River; Collins Killed by Laughland; How Shannon's Appointment was Viewed by the People of'he Border; His Arrival at Kansas City; Commits Himself to Slavery; Pleases Pro-Slavery Men; Address t te " Law-andOrder People;" Call for a Convention; Object of the lmovement; The Convention; Remarks by Shannon, Calhoun, Parrott, Judge Lecompte and Woodson................................... 200-212

CHiAPTERl XX-1855.

BE:GINM-ING OF TIIV WAAKRSAARU WAR-Diisputes About Claims; Hickory Point; Origin of Diffeulties; Coleman kill Dw; Murderer Fiees to VWesttnoret and Sarrlcade"s timseflf to Sheriff Jones; Offense to the D ead; Funeral: C.,iven:ion; Jones-His Char acter and Hlistory; Starta to Lecomptnn With His Prsoner; Obtains a Writ tv Arrest Brannoon; TIte Arrest; The Rescne; Excuse for the Rescue; Lawrence and It Action; Design in Makin- th' Arrest; She, ff Jones Writes to Missu ouri for Help and to the Go-ernor for Three Thonsand Troops; Governor's Letter to Miaqjor General Richardson; Excitement in Missouri -Inflammatory Appeal; Shannon' Proclamation; Woodson's Letter to Atchison.................................................... 23 —-225

CHAPTER XXI-1855.

WAKARUSA WAR-N-issouri' Respon:.-e; The Force3 in Cap About, Lawrence-Object in Surrounindin th.e Tow; Editors of the Squattep Sov vreigu in the Field; Lawrence Dsmisass the Rescuers and Prepares for Defeiqse; Sends Couriers Throagh the TFrritory and Calls tor Assistance; The Response; Leavenworthi Del, ation; R]p'ortt of t.e Coiomitmitee r Governor's Prociamatiio; Petition to t; President; Colonel Sumner Solicited to Interfere; nemonrial to Congress; Preparations ft Lawrtnci"-It- s Force and Fortifications; Sheriff Jones in Town; Rdlcants fear to attAck; General Eastin's Letter t: Governor Shannon; The Latter Tefgraphs to the President -Writes to Colonel Sumner; Sumner's tAeply; Shannon Acting upon Sumner's Snggestion, writes to Sheriff Jones and Rliichardson;'The Replies of these Two Gentlemen; Shannon again Writes to Sumner; Committee of Safety's Letter to Governor Shannon; The Daoutatlion from Lawrence, and Their Representation to tie Governor; The Interview; The Governor Sees that He haa been Imposed Ukon; Goes to Wakaruse Camp; Labors to uell the Commotion; Again Asks Aid of Colonel Sumner; Rufians Attempt to Intercept His Dispatch; Sumner Refuses to Mlove; Anderson's Letter; T'he Biack Fla " to be Raised; Pomeroy Intercepted; Indian Chiefs Offer Aid to Lawrence; Clark's Pottowatomies............ 226-242

CHAPTER XXII-1855.

TnH MISUNrDERSTANDING-Thomas Barber; His Wife; Parting Scene; He Go)e to Lawrence; Particulars of His Murder; The Widow's A ony; Effect Upon the Free State Boys; Deputation Sent to Conduct the Governor into Town; The Conference; The Governor is Satisfied of His Mistake; He Returns to the Pro-Slavery Camp; His Orders to General Richardson;


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"Halloa!" said I; and as I said it, I noticed that blood was running down his shirt, "what's the matter now?"

But he did not answer me. He was dead, with a dagger through his heart. There was no longer a boy skylarking with the women outside the station.

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Love Me, Love My Dog

 * Love Me, Love My Dog, a poem by Isabella Valancy Crawford.
 * Love Me, Love My Dog, a short story by P. G. Wodehouse.

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 He Arranges for a Conference; Returns to Lawrence; Signs the Treaty; Dissatisfaction: The Treaty; Conference on the Wakarusa; Attempt to Assassinate Lane and Robinson; Shannon's Orders to the Pro-Slavery Leaders to Disband their Forces; D!aappointment of the Ruffians; He Authorizes Robinson and Lane to Defend the Town; Incidents; The Social; Disbanding the Forces; A Tribute, to the Ladies of Lawrence. 243-255 CHAPTER XXIII-18)5. ROBINSON AND LANE-Life and Character of Governor Robinson; Life and Character of Hon. J. H. Lane; Robinson's Address to the Soldiers on the (tecasion of Their Disbandment; Arrest and Trial of Some of the Rescuers; "Border Rafians;"

Their Character............................................................. 256-265

CHAPTER XXIV-1855-6.

VARIOUS EVENTS OF THE WINTER —Vote on Topeka Constitntion; Destruction of the Polls at Leavenworth; Mastering Oat of Territorial Militia; Destruction of thr Press of the "Territorial Register;" M. W. Delahay; Convention to Nominate Free State Officers; The Election of State Officers Under Topeka Constitution; Election at Leavenworth; Disturbances at Eastin; Pro.Slavery Man Killed; Free State Men 1Made Prisoners; All Escape except Brown, who is Minldered; Resol!-. tions of the Legislature; Further Troub'es at Eastin; beverity of the W inter.................................................................. 266-273

CHAPTEPt XXV-1856.

EXTERMINATION-President's Message; Border Ruffians Determine to Exterminate; Jones' Letter to Robinson and Lane; Their Reply; The Treaty Exploded; Preparatious Along the Border; Dr. Stringfellow's Proposition to Bay Arms " Kickspoo Pioneer" on the War cry; Atchison's Harangue; The Bordier Chiefs send a Messenger to Washington to Preserve the Influence of the Administration; They nucceed; "'he South Comes to the Rescue; Baford's Move; Extract from,the "Eufaulq Spirit of the South;" Action of Alabama; Resolution,; in Mississippi; Southern Emigrants; Border Chiefs Go South to Lecture; Atchison's Letter to the South.......................... 274-282

C!t:APTER XXVI-1856.

FREE STATE PREPARATIONS AND PROCLAMATION OF TIE PRE8IDENTApprehensions of the Free State Men; Alarming Reports from the Border; Dark Prospect of the Free State MIen; LSwrence Prepares for the Worst; Action of the Executive Committe-o; Deputation to the Fre) States; Letters to the President; His Proclamation; Aimed at Free State M1ien; Satisfactory to Border Ruffians, except in One Respect; Governor Authorized to Employ the United States Troops................................... 283-288

CHAPTER XXVII-1856.

STATE LEGISLATURE-Winter passes by without any Invasion; Rumors that the Legislature would be Arrested; Assembling


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 of the State Legislature; Its Organization; Governor's Message; Acts of the Legislature; Territorial Executive Committee Makes its Report and Closes its Existence; Its History; Territorial Free State Scrip; Names of Members of the Legislature........................................................................ 289-295

CHAPTER XXVIII-1856.

CONGRESS - INVESTIGATING COMMITTEE - Thirty-fourth Congress; Reeder Contests Whitfield's Seat; Appointment of the Investigating Committee; The Resolutions; The Committee; Their Action; Their Report; Its Summary; The Appointment of the Committee the Work of Anti-Slavery Men; Bitterly Opposed by Pro-Slavery Men; Border Chiefs Enraged; Renew Their Threats of Extermination; The Quarantine; Pardee Butler Again Outraged; Whitfield Ousted; (Topeka Constitution in Congress-see Appendix.)...................................... 296-302

CHAPTER XXIX-1856.

THE LEADING FREE STATE MEN ARRESTED OR DRIVEN FROM THE TERRITORY-Interest in Kansas; S. N. Wood; Southein Emigrants; Buford's Regiment; Attempts at Arrests; Sheriff Jones again Enraged; Calls on the Governor for Help: Governor Writes For and Obtains Troops Sumner's Letter to the Mayor of Lawrence; Sheriff Again in Lawrence and Makes Arrests; Is Shot in the Evening; Action of the Citizens; Sam. Salters Continues the Arrests; Hiding of Free State Men; Lawrence Environed; Colonel Sumner; Writes a Letter to Dr. Robinson; The Reply; Attempt to Arrest Reeder; Failure; Writs for Leading Free State Men; Their Conference at Tecumseh: Decide to Call State Legislature and Elude the Arrest until It Meets; Governor Robinson Starts East; Is Intercepted; Mrs. Robinson Goes On; Governor Brought Back; Escape of Reeder; Arrest of G. W. Browi and Gaius Jenkins; Copy of the Indictment for Treason...................... 303-311

CHAPTER XXX-1856.

THE SIEGE -F LAWRENCE-Lawrence Again Besieged; "Squatter Sovereign; " Proclamation of the Secretary; Letter to Governor Shannon; His Reply; Action in Regard to Secretary's Proclamation; People Without a Leader; Committee of Safety; Its Policy; Resigns; A New Committee; Its Policy and Reasons; Federal Troops; The Embarrassment; Discontent; Many Leave Lawrence; The Invading Forces; Detention of a United States Officer; Arms Seized; Persons Arrested; Cox's Visit to the Pro-Slavery Camp; Letter from Lawrence to Secretary Woodson; His Reply, Efforts to Avert the Calamity; The Special Effort; A Failure; Murder of Jones and Stewart; A Final Peace Effort to Ward Off the Blow.............................................................................. 312-328

CHAPTER XXXI-1856.

THE SACK OF LAWRENCE-The Invading Forces; They Appear Behind Lawrence; Scene in Lawrence; Marshal Enters Town;