looked as heavy as an anvil. He thought if he could only drag that great
burden away the poor old dying man would not breathe so heavily.

He saw a young emigrant stabbed with a bowie-knife by a drunken comrade,
and two young men try to kill their uncle, one holding him while the
other snapped repeatedly an Allen revolver, which failed to go off. Then
there was the drunken rowdy who proposed to raid the "Welshman's" house,
one sultry, threatening evening--he saw that, too. With a boon
companion, John Briggs, he followed at a safe distance behind. A widow
with her one daughter lived there. They stood in the shadow of the dark
porch; the man had paused at the gate to revile them. The boys heard the
mother's voice warning the intruder that she had a loaded gun and would
kill him if he stayed where he was. He replied with a tirade, and she
warned him that she would count ten--that if he remained a second longer
she would fire. She began slowly and counted up to five, the man
laughing and jeering. At six he grew silent, but he did not go. She
counted on: seven, eight, nine--

The boys, watching from the dark roadside, felt their hearts stop. There
was a long pause, then the final count, followed a second later by a gush
of flame. The man dropped, his breast riddled. At the same instant the
thunder-storm that had been gathering broke loose. The boys fled wildly,
believing that Satan himself had arrived to claim the lost soul.

That was a day and locality of violent impulse and sudden action.
Happenings such as these were not infrequent in a town like Hannibal.
And there were events connected with slavery. Sam once saw a slave
struck down and killed with a piece of slag, for a trifling offense. He
saw an Abolitionist attacked by a mob that would have lynched him had not
a Methodist minister defended him on a plea that he must be crazy. He