feathered, blindfolded, and tied to a tree in the woods. In 1794 a process went out from the district court at Philadelphia against seventy-five distillers who had disobeyed the law. Fifty were in the five counties of Fayette, Bedford, Alleghany, Washington, and Westmoreland. Each writ was dated the 13th of May, and each was entered in the docket as issued on the 31st. But the officials were so tardy that it was July when the marshal rode west to serve them. He arrived in the hurry of harvest, when liquor circulated most freely and drunkenness was most prevalent. Yet he served his writs without harm till but one was left. It was drawn against a distiller named Miller, whose house was fourteen miles from Pittsburgh, on the road to Washington. On the morning of July 15th the marshal set out from Pittsburgh to serve it. He found Miller in a harvest field surrounded by a body of reapers. All went well till he was about to return, when one of them gave the alarm. While some threw down their scythes and followed him, others ran back to the house of the brigade inspector near by. There the Mingo creek regiment had gathered to make a select corps of militia as its quota of the eighty thousand minute men required by Congress. All had drunk deeply, and as the messengers came up shouting "The federal sheriff is taking away men to Philadelphia," they flew to arms. Though it was then night many set off at once, and gathering strength as they went, drew up the next morning, thirty-seven strong, before the house of Revenue Inspector Neville, near Pittsburgh. At the head of them was John Holcroft who whitened half the trees in the four counties with the effusions of Tom the Tinker. The inspector demanded what they wished. They answered evasively. He fired upon them. They returned the shot, and were instantly opened on by a band of negroes posted in a neighboring house. At this the mob scattered, leaving six wounded and one dead. Tom the Tinker was a nom-de-guerre which originated from the house of an obnoxious official being pulled to pieces by a mob whose members gave out that they were "mending it." Mending and tinkering being interchangeable terms, the members dubbed themselves "tinkers," and "Tom the Tinker was shortly evolved as the popular watchword of the first rebellion against the United States government." CHAPTER VIII _Christenings--Marriages--Funerals_