lves strangely embarrassed and handicapped. Their will was good
enough, but how to carry out their purpose?--that was the pinch. A
private assassination was a thing that looked easy enough at the first
sight, but it might turn out that they had undertaken an ugly job for
themselves.

A meeting of the Disciples was held at the house of Archibald Elliott
in the month of June. It was called quietly, and no noise made about
it. There was a large attendance, and it was evident that if we could
hold regular meetings great good would be done. But the neighborhood
was soon filled with alarming rumors. It was said that a company of
South Carolinians were seen to go into a grove of bushes, about
nightfall, where the writer would be expected to pass, and that they
were seen to emerge from the same place the next morning. One event,
however, adjourned our meetings without date. There was a man living
in the western part of the county named Barnett, who was a man of
considerable attainment, and had been a member of the Christian
Church. But he was given to drink. His wife, however, who was an
excellent Christian woman, remained steadfast to the church, and
Barnett, as he saw his hold on the church and his hope of heaven
slipping away from him, clung the more loyally to his wife, as though
her Christian excellencies would save them both. At her request he
invited me to preach a sermon at his house, and I consented. But when
the South Carolinians in Atchison heard of it, they sent an insulting
message to Barnett that they would come and shoot me. Barnett's
Southern blood was all on fire. Who were these men that had come to
Atchison county to ride rough-shod over him in his own house? He sent
a message equally defiant back to them, that if they did come he and
his neighbors would shoot them. But there was one man in the county
that needed to have no nervousness as touching his reputation for
personal bravery. That man was Caleb May; and he interposed and said:
"Let us wait patiently for more peaceful times. The Son of man did not
come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." But this adjourned
without date our meetings.

One incident must illustrate the strained and peculiar condition of
affairs in Atchison county. Archimedes Speck lived on the Stranger
Creek, several miles below the residence of the writer. He was a man
of magnificent physical development, and was a pronounced Free State
man. His wife's people originally came from