one of the seven should be posted there
as sentinel during the night, two or more of the gang, as they found it
convenient, were to come during the hours in which they knew their
associate would have the store under his charge, when, by means of their
keys, and sheltered in the security which he afforded them (by betraying
in so flagrant a manner the trust and confidence reposed in him as a
sentinel), they should open a passage into the store, where they should
remain shut up until they had procured as much liquor or provisions as
they could take off. If the patrols visited the store while they chanced
to be within its walls, the door was found locked and secure, the
sentinel alert and vigilant on his post, and the store apparently safe.

Fortunately for the settlement, on the night preceding the discovery one
of the party intended to have availed himself of his situation as
sentinel, and to enter the store alone, purposing to plunder without the
participation of his associates. But while he was standing with the key
in the lock, he heard the patrol advancing. The key had done its office,
but as he knew that the lock would be examined by the corporal, in his
fright and haste to turn it back again, he mistook the way, and, finding
that he could not get the key out of the lock, he broke it, and was
compelled to leave the wards in it; the other part of the key he threw
away.

On this information, the six soldiers whom he accused were taken up and
tried; when, the evidence of the accomplice being confirmed by several
strong corroborating circumstances, among which it appeared that the
store had been broken into and robbed by them at various times for
upwards of eight months, they were unanimously found guilty, and
sentenced to suffer that death which they owned they justly merited.
Their defence wholly consisted in accusing the accomplice of having been
the first to propose and carry the plan into execution, and afterwards
the first to accuse and ruin the people he had influenced to associate
with him. A crime of such magnitude called for a severe example; and the
sentence was carried into execution a few days after their trial.

Some of these unhappy men were held in high estimation by their officers,
but the others, together with the accomplice Hunt, had been long verging
toward this melancholy end. Four of them had been tried for the death of
their comrade Bulmore, which happened in a contest with one of them in
Novem