KANSAS AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND.

who bore his name objects of special vengeance. Mr. Speer’s residence
being out of town, he himself escaped.

A gentleman whose name was on the list of the doomed, a book-
seller, was called to the door, shot dead, and fell inside of the hall.
His wife, a young lady, was called out, and the house fired. She
begged hard to be permitted to remove the body of her husband from
the burning building, but this was rudely denied. One of the mis-
creants observed that she had something in her hand. It was her
husband’s ambrotype, which she had snatched up as she came out.
He took it from her, looked at it, and then threw it into the flames.

Nearly two hundred dead bodies strewed the streets, and an almost
universal conflagration had laid the town in ruins. No resistance was
or could be made. A small military force had been there a few days
before, but their commander, in spite of the remonstrances and en-
treaties of the citizens, sent them away, assuring them that there was
no danger. Poor man! he remained himself; but his house was sur-
rounded, and, in a vain attempt to save himself, climbed down into
his own well, which was under his roof. His house was fired and he
was smothered.

A strange fatality seemed to attend this lamentable affair on all
hands. A messenger was coming full speed to apprise the people of
the approach of the invaders. His horse stumbled and fell, and he
was killed. But for this he would have arrived in time to have had
the men of the town organized, and it could have been successfully
defended and saved.

I now come to what I believe to be unwritten history. I have it
from a gentleman of St. Louis, of great intelligence and probity.
Having done their work, the raiders, who were mounted men, rapidly
retreated towards the Missouri border. It appears that they divided
into two or three parties or squads. A swift messenger bore the
tidings of what they had done at Lawrence to the brave and determined
leader of a company or band of loyal Missourians. Believing that one
of these squads must necessarily cross the Osage river at a certain
ford, he posted his men —some under the dark shadow of the opposite
bank, and some in a corn-field on a road close by —and awaited their
approach. About one o’clock in the morning they heard them coming.
The men under the bank lay still until the raiders were nearly across
the river; then one simultaneous volley emptied twenty saddles, and
dead and wounded were alike swept down the strong current of the
Osage. Twelve only cleared the ford, to meet a similar fate at the
hands of the men in the corn-field. Not one escaped.

‘What was done with the wounded among the twelve?” asked