ctim of Cleaveland notoriety, whom, for the sake of
convenience, I will designate by his name, Taylor.

He was a man of extraordinary abilities and gentlemanly deportment. He
and the two brothers were mutual acquaintances. They had been
accomplices, no doubt, in many a deed of darkness. But as "the devil
should have his due," I am bound to exculpate him from any participation
in the alleged crime. That he was innocent in this affair I have the
fullest evidence. I was solicited by the pettifogger, (I will not say
lawyer,) for the brothers, to take a bribe for perjury, and swear poor
Taylor guilty of giving me five hundred dollars of counterfeit money,
which money he would place in my hands. Of this fellow, I will speak in
another chapter. The younger brother was now to declare himself and
brother as having been seduced by Taylor. It was to be done without the
apparent knowledge of the elder brother, whom we will hereafter call
Colonel Brown. It was to be communicated to one of the officers, with a
solicitation to keep it a secret from the colonel. He also had an
appointed part to play. The character he was to sustain in this drama of
well-concocted treachery, I will next present.

CHAPTER III.

The colonel's physician advised him to take medicine, to reduce his
system, and give him the appearance of one rapidly sinking under a
pulmonary affection. He consented, as such a plan was considered the
most likely to succeed. It will be readily seen, that the design was to
work upon the sympathies of the officers, and thus procure his
enlargement. Nor were they disappointed. The colonel's health began to
fail. The drugs acted their appropriate part. Some of his friends made
vigorous exertions to have him removed to the hospital, declaring it
necessary for the continuation of life. Others were actively engaged in
giving forth intimations, and expressing their fears that he would die
before his trial came on, always taking care to assert their confidence
of his innocence. This was a mere ruse, to trick the officers into a
consent for his removal. But they had mistaken the character of the men
with whom they were dealing. They were not to be moved by exhibitions of
suffering humanity. Their hearts had become insensible to human misery
and they resisted all appeals to sympathy.

There was now but one alternative for the friends of the prisoner. They
must apply the drugs more assiduously, till they made a mere skeleton of