I arrived in the vicinity of Flat Woods, in St. Francois county, Missouri, on the 12th day of June, and immediately commenced searching for George Cornecious, the man who reported my whereabouts to McIlvaine and the soldiers, thereby causing me to be wounded and expelled from Flat Woods. After searching two days and two nights I succeeded in shooting him; he was the first man I ever killed; a little notch cut in the stock of my gun was made to commemorate the deed. To avoid implicating my family in any way with my transactions, I satisfied myself with exchanging words with my wife through a friend who was thought by his neighbors to be a Union man. My family resided in a little cabin on Back creek, and my wife was cultivating a garden. To carry out the darling object I had in view—that of killing Firman McIlvaine—I went to Flat river, and after remaining several days, I took a pone of bread for my rations and walked to his farm on Big river after night. I passed through his fields, but finding no place where harvesting was going on, I crossed Big river on a fish-trap dam and ranged over the Baker farm on the opposite side of the river, about a mile above Big river Mills, where the McIlvaine family now resided. I found where harvesting had just commenced in a field which formed the southwestern corner of the farm. This field is on the top of a perpendicular bluff, about one hundred feet high, and is detached from the main farm by a road leading from Ste. Genevieve to Potosi. A portion of the grain had already been cut on the western side of the field, near the woods; there I took my station in the fence corner, early in the morning, thinking that McIlvaine would probably shock the grain while the negroes were cradling. In this I was mistaken, for I saw him swinging his cradle in another part of the field, beyond the range of my gun. I next attempted to crawl along the edge of the bluff among the stunted cedars, but had to abandon the attempt because the negroes stopped in the shade of the cedars every time they came around. Then I went back into the woods, and passed down under the bluff, along the edge of the river, until I got opposite the place where they were at work; but I found no place where I could ascend the high rock. I went around the lower end of the bluff, and crawled up to the field on the other side, but I was at too great a distance to get a shot. Finally, I went down to the river and was resting myself near a large flat rock that projected out into the river, where some persons had recently been fishing, when suddenly Firman McIlvaine rode down to the river and watered his horse at a ford about sixty yards below me. I tried to draw a bead on him, but the limb of a tree prevented me, and when he started back he rode too fast for my purpose.