his friends were evidently the aggressors--at least were first to resort to violence--and when the county judge was appealed to by outsiders to issue warrants for their arrest, positively declined to do so, saying that Eversole had done nothing to be arrested for, and that French ought to be driven away from town. Thus the inaction of the authorities stimulated the friends of each faction, and each sought safety in arming such persons as would take service with them, and setting at defiance the law instead of looking to it as their best protection. Finally, one Sunday morning last April, Joe Eversole, in company with Nick Combs, his brother-in-law, and Josiah Combs, started from Hazard to Hyden to circuit court, and when about five miles out from Hazard they were fired upon from ambush and Eversole and young Combs were instantly killed. Fulton French was indicted for that killing, and while he may have instigated it, he certainly did not participate in the shooting. The killing of Joe Eversole seems to have demoralized his friends, the most prominent of whom soon after left Hazard. The last assassination was that of Elijah Morgan, who was shot from ambush, near Hazard, on the 9th of last month. His only crime appears to have been that he sympathized with French. Morgan was also a son-in-law of Josiah Combs and brother-in-law of Eversole. And now, perhaps, you are ready to ask what it was all about? Well, I cannot say, although I very naturally sought to learn the cause. Some of whom I enquired thought it was business rivalry, while others said there was a woman in the case, and I think it attributable in part to both those causes. French and Eversole were both merchants and lawyers, and I was told that some three years ago a man who was clerking for French accused French of deflouring his wife, and quit French and took service with Eversole, and told the latter that the former had offered him five hundred dollars to murder him, and soon afterwards Silas Gayheart, who was a friend of French, was murdered, as it is charged, by Eversole and his friends, and from that time on the troubles have grown and assassinations multiplied, the victims being first from one side and then from the other. I thought it advisable to call out 44 of the reserve militia, all that I had arms for, and selected these from the best, non-partisan people that I could. The list was not complete when I left, but I authorized Capt. Sohan, whom I found to be an excellent officer, to muster them in, and gave him similar instructions to those you gave me on the subject.