Late in the fall of the same year Phillips, with three other men, crossed over into Logan County, W. Va., to receive the prisoners who had been arrested, as he supposed, on warrants issued by Governor Wilson after the issuance of the Kentucky governor's requisitions. After crossing the line between the two States he, for the first time, learned that no warrants had ever been issued, at least that no arrests had been made or even attempted. Then something happened. He and his men suddenly came upon Selkirk McCoy, Tom Chambers and Mose Christian, three of the murder clan that slew the McCoy brothers, and who were included in the requisitions. The opportunity to nab them was too good to resist the temptation to capture them, even without warrants, and it was done. He hurried them back and across the line into Kentucky, served them with Kentucky bench warrants and delivered them to the jailer at Pikeville. The rage of the Hatfields over this "unlawful" arrest knew no bounds. It was an outrage, and a shameful violation of the law, they cried. They sought an outlet for their pent-up indignation and decided to make another attempt upon the life of old man McCoy. For this purpose the leaders selected the most dangerous and desperate members of the clan. At midnight, January 1st, 1888, this band of desperadoes, led by Cap Hatfield, heartless cutthroats all, surrounded the house of Randolph McCoy. On New Year, when every man and woman in the land should reflect regretfully upon the many follies and errors committed during the year gone by and good resolutions should fill every heart, on New Year's night this outlaw band prepared to and did inaugurate another year of bloodshed and of horror. Silently, with the stealth of Indians, the phantom shadows moved about the doomed homestead. They were in no hurry. It was far from their intention to break into the house and with a few well-directed shots put an end to the old man whom they had sworn to destroy. No! Such a death would have been too quick and painless. He must burn; they must maim and torture. What mattered it that women were in the house. "They will serve him for company," chuckled the heartless Jim Vance. They must first be made to feel the impossibility of escape; to entertain their tormentors with their distress and horror. They must furnish sport, the sport the savages so much delighted in. Within all was quiet. The inmates were all wrapped in slumber, utterly unconscious of the fate that was in store for them. Without, through the gloom of the cold January night, shadows flitted to and fro, busily attending to their hellish work.