It was dark when the two desperate men started on their perilous journey. With heads bent down upon their breasts, like men facing a beating hail, they ran for their lives. Every gun of the enemy was trained upon them, and fired. Presently defiant yells from the French position announced to the crestfallen Eversoles that their prey had escaped them. When the battle started French was absent from town. He arrived during the night. All night long the battle continued with scarcely an intermission in the firing. During the night Tom Smith and Jesse Fields succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the Eversoles and occupied the Graveyard Hill. When the first ray of dawn approached, Fields and Smith opened a terrific fire upon the Eversoles in the court house, the balls crashing through the windows, driving the occupants to seek safety by throwing themselves upon the floor. During the early morning hours two of the Eversole men attempted to cross a street near the court house, when Fields and Smith opened fire upon them. One of the men, J. McKnight, was instantly killed, while his companion escaped. Smith and Fields used a sunken grave as a rifle pit and from a tombstone Smith took the rest for the shot that killed McKnight. The strategic advantage of French's men perplexed the Eversoles, who, penned up in the court house, were rendered practically helpless. The fusilade was so continuous that an attempt to return the fire from the windows would have meant certain death. The balls crashed through the windows, tearing the wood casings to splinters and the shutters were completely shot away. The furniture in the court room was thrown about and knocked into atoms. The building, from which the Eversoles had expected so much as a point of vantage, proved a death trap. To retire from it the Eversoles appeared as anxious as they had been to take possession of it. Their retreat to the river bank was effected in safety, but to prevent attack while crossing the river, Green Morris and a companion remained concealed under the banks of the river. Fields and Smith on the Graveyard Hill were the first to see the Eversoles in retreat and started in pursuit. Approaching the hiding-place of Morris, the latter fired, wounding Fields severely in the arm and thus effectually checked further pursuit. If Smith and Fields had reached the river unharmed, the record of the fight might present an increased list of casualties, as both were men of great courage and good marksmanship. On the records of the Perry Circuit Court appears an order of Special Judge Hurst, giving his reason for the unceremonious adjournment of court. It is an interesting document. Certainly Judge Hurst's reason for adjournment seems a valid one: PERRY CIRCUIT COURT. 4th day Nov., Term 1889. At this term of the Court there were two armed factions in the town of Hazard, the French and Eversole factions, antagonistic to each other.