"I will not describe, for I can not, what I did. With the name of Maggie on my lips, and the Indian devil in my heart, I perpetrated a horrible murder. The baby, a little girl, I spared and picked up with some of its clothing and carried it away with me. The rest were all struck down by my avenging ax. As I was leaving with the baby, my conscience already smiting me for what I had done, a groan came from the eldest child, a boy. Stooping, I found he was not dead, but that my ax had fractured his skull. He was between ten and twelve years of age and slender. I snatched him up, and, having set fire to the house, I put the baby in a large basket and set off with the wounded boy and the baby girl. "How I reached the cave, without discovery, no one, not even I, know. The burning mansion doubtless aided me, by calling off all pursuit. Here I remained for a week or two, living I know not how. The boy recovered from the blow, but he was a idiot and had no recollection of his former life. "I had no heart to kill him or the baby now; I had had blood enough, and for some time was puzzled what to do with the baby and the idiot. There was a colored freeman, known as 'Free John,' living near, with his wife. I knew I could trust them, and, one night, I told them all. I knew that Henry Tompkins had a brother in Virginia, and to him I resolved to take the children. "My friends went ahead in their ox-cart, leaving bits of leaves on the road to indicate which way they had gone. I started after them, with the idiot by my side and carrying the baby in my arms. I had found on some of the baby's clothes the name Irene, which I was careful to preserve, as they might lead to her discovery; a plan I had decided upon when I should be far enough out of the way. When in the State of Virginia, about twenty-five miles from Mr. Tompkins' the boy ran away from me, and I did not see him again for years. We had traveled mostly by night and found hiding-places in the cane-brakes during the day time. "I finally reached the vicinity of Twin Mountains, where I found Free John, and we remained there for two or three days, as we both were nearly exhausted with our long, hard travel. One day, while at his hut, an old hunter, called Uncle Dan, stopped in for a moment and saw the little, tired, dirty baby. He looked at it curiously and asked some questions, which Free John's wife answered, but that very night I carried it to the mansion of Mr. Tompkins and left it on his porch. He raised the child, and now she is the wife of his son, and her husband does not know that she is his own cousin. The boy finally wandered to the same place and lived there and at the cabin of Dan Martin, until he was accidentally killed by the Union soldiers. He went by the name of Crazy Joe, on account of his persistently calling himself Joseph.