in the rear that he was going to kill him, and proceeded to the execution of his dictum. The intended victim, however, refused to stand and be killed in his tracks, but, whipping out a big knife, he made toward the man of murderous intent, dodging in rapid zig-zag fashion to confuse his aim, and reached him unscathed through a shower of bullets. Plunging his knife into the gun man's body, he literally disemboweled him.
The constituted authority was powerless to check the outrages, and murderers walked the streets after their bloody work with as much freedom as though conscious of having performed the most legitimate acts.
Finally, a negro was found one morning hanging to a beam. No one knew how it came about and the circumstance was fruitful of much comment; but he was only a negro. A few days afterward a white man was found hanging in a similar manner. Here truly was matter calling for declarations of the most drastic vengeance. The "toughs" congregated in force and swore long and loud; but the most searching inquisition they were able to make throughout the town failed to reveal a single clew; no one could furnish even a lateral lead to the identification of the executioners.
A third man was found swinging by the neck from a limb and it was at once remembered that he had been of the same criminal tastes and habits in life that had distinguished each of the former victims. The demonstrations on this occasion were somewhat subdued. Those who had celebrated the preceding like event with great explosion of invective now gathered in small knots and conversed privily.
Still another, selected with discriminating care from the same social stratum out of which the three others were quarried, was found dangling at the end of a rope and to all appearance having reached his end through exactly the same channel.
There was not now the least doubt but that some body was doing the work, and after the fifth man was hanged, lawless men began to hide out and to steal away in the night. The
