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قراءة كتاب The Story of a Dark Plot; Or, Tyranny on the Frontier
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
the officials, and all should endeavor to enforce the law. Mr. Dyer's remarks at the time were taken to represent the desire of the law-abiding people of Brome County. In carrying out this idea, Mr. Smith, they contend, was simply doing his duty, and it is expected that in doing it he had the majority of the people of the county with him."
This brutal assault, made upon a law-abiding citizen by one whom he had never injured in any way is a fair sample of the fruits of intemperance wherever found. There are those who have seemed loath to believe that Mr. Smith's strong temperance convictions and his activity in carrying them out were the real causes which led to the bitter hatred that inspired this fiendish act. They seem to think it impossible that "respectable (?)" citizens of a temperance county should attempt in such a reckless, lawless way to prevent opposition to their traffic in strong drink. But what is there incredible in this? When we consider that traffic in strong drink means a trade in the souls of men, women and children, and in innocence, virtue and hope; when we remember that the bartender daily takes from his customers the price of food, clothes, health, respectability and all that he has of real value in the world, and gives him in return nothing but liquid ruin; when we know that the rumseller's business is a sort of wholesale murder continually, inasmuch as by it millions of lost souls are sent into eternity annually; in view of all these facts, why should we be surprised when the liquor sellers of a community plan together to rid themselves of one who has vigorously opposed their dangerous work? It is only another form of the same business.
The disclosures following the assault upon Mr. Smith convinced many people of the evils of the liquor traffic, and some who had favored and pitied the hotel keepers when they had been fined for lawbreaking now turned against them, feeling that they could no longer uphold their deeds. Meantime, some of the hotel keepers of the vicinity gave evidence of their guilt by disappearing from the locality very soon after the assault took place.
The investigation of the affair was placed in the hands of S. H. Carpenter, Superintendent of the Canadian Secret Service, and detectives were at once set at work upon the case. Either Mr. Carpenter or one of the men under his direction was constantly in the vicinity, seeking to obtain clues by which to determine the guilty party. One man, who lived near the mountain pass between Sutton and Glen Sutton, declared that, early on the morning of July 8th, he had seen two men pass his house driving very rapidly and going in the direction of the latter village, one of the men having no hat, but wearing a cloth around his head. Of course this story had an air of significance inasmuch as the assailant of the previous night had left his hat at Sutton Junction, but it did not prove to be of much importance. It was soon settled in the minds of many that the stranger whom we have mentioned as having been frequenting the hotels at Sutton and Abercorn had been the wielder of the lead pipe on July 8th, but his name and whereabouts were not to be obtained, as he had been sailing under false colors during his stay in the country, and those who were initiated into the secrets of the case, of course, kept silence.
At length, Mr. Smith received a letter from a woman in Vermont, who had formerly been employed at one of the hotels in the vicinity of the assault, and soon after he met this same woman at Sutton, and her evidence was a great aid towards locating the assailant. She knew nothing about the pretended Boston horse-buyer, who had apparently forgotten the object of his northward journey and disappeared without having purchased any of the Canadian steeds, but she remembered an American having once stopped for a time at the hotel where she was then working, and from the description given it seemed that he might be the same man. The one whom she described she said came from Marlboro, Mass., and thither a man was soon despatched in search. It proved that the man to whom she had directed Mr. Smith was not the one in question, but in searching for him the real perpetrator of the crime was found, as he chanced to be also a resident of Marlboro, Mass. Having located his man, the gentleman in search returned home, leaving in Marlboro a Canadian detective who should keep watch of the man until Mr. Carpenter went there. However, when Mr. Carpenter, who was accompanied by Mr. Smith, reached the place, the man whom they sought had already been lost track of by the detective, but after a few days Mr. Smith saw him in company with several others, and at once identified him as being the man whom he had seen in the vicinity of Sutton Junction previous to the assault, and also as having the form and gait which he had noticed his assailant to have when he had watched him fleeing from the scene of his cowardly attack. Soon this man was captured at Hudson, Mass., a place about five miles distant from Marlboro. He was arrested by Chief of Police Skully of Hudson and Policeman Hater of Worcester, and taken to Fitchburg. The name of this young man who had apparently come very near being a murderer was Walter W. Kelly, and he had been a bartender in Marlboro, which probably made him feel more sympathy for his Canadian brethren when their liberty to sell intoxicants was interfered with.
While at Fitchburg, Kelly was advised to yield himself up and go freely to Canada with Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Smith, because, he was told, they were determined to have him at any cost, and, if he made them the trouble and expense of extraditing him, he would only be obliged to lie in jail a much longer time before his trial could take place, whereas the sentence of punishment would doubtless be just as severe in the one case as in the other.
Acting in the spirit of this advice he gave himself up into the hands of Detective Carpenter and went with him to Montreal, where he acknowledged his guilt, and also told that he had been hired to do the deed by John Howarth, a young man who lived with the hotel keeper at Abercorn, and that James Wilson, one of the hotel keepers at Sutton, had driven the team which carried him to and from the Junction on the night of the assault.
Mr. Smith, who had also accompanied Mr. Carpenter to Montreal, at once returned home, and, having notified a number of his friends and procured a constable from Knowlton, Que., went in company with several others from Sutton to Abercorn, on Saturday night, August 25th, for the purpose of arresting Howarth. On a Saturday night also, just seven weeks previous, a smaller company of men had gone from Sutton in the opposite direction, not to arrest a guilty man, but to assault an innocent man, not in the cause of right and justice, but of wrong and injustice. But now it seemed that the tide had turned!
The little company of "friends of temperance" surrounded the Abercorn hotel, and the constable, going to the door, called loudly to Mr. Jenne, the proprietor, who was doubtless in the land of dreams. Mr. Jenne, who appeared to be somewhat suspicious, was loath to open his house at that unseemly hour, and demanded his visitor's name; but the constable, giving a fictitious name, enquired for John Howarth, and when that individual made his appearance, he was at once arrested in the name of the Queen. Seeing the people outside, neither he nor Mr. Jenne dared resist, and, being assured by the latter that he would soon have him free again, Howarth accompanied the constable to the jail at Sweetsburg, feeling, doubtless, much less pleased with his future prospects than he had felt when planning by violence and bloodshed to frighten