The conduct of Frank James for some time after the surrender indicated a desire on his part to become once more a quiet, peaceable citizen. He was extremely circumspect in behavior, and demeaned himself in a most unobtrusive way. Such was the promise of the new life after the years of bitter strife in the late Guerrilla. But he was not proof against the assaults of passion. One day the old flame burst out anew with consuming fury. Frank had started away from the State and stopped at the town of Brandenburg. It was several months after the remnants of the desperate band which Quantrell led into Kentucky had surrendered to the Federal authorities. But the country was still in an unsettled condition. Bad men who had found occupation in hovering about the verge of battle and plundering the ghastly victims of war ere the last feeble breath had departed from their pale lips, were now idle and had become wandering thugs in the highways of the land. Horse thieves and bestial monsters were to be found prowling about in nearly every community, and more especially in the border States. A large number of people, and those, too, who had served in the Confederate, as well as those who had been soldiers in the Union armies, looked upon the men who had been with Quantrell, and Mundy, Magruder and Marion, Anderson, Farris, Hickman and other noted Guerrillas, with suspicion. Many persons looked upon them as men of evil antecedents--as thieves. Horse stealing was carried on at a lively rate all along the border. Kansas, Missouri and Kentucky were particularly afflicted for many months after the surrender by the presence of these enemies of the farming and stock-raising communities. Just about the time Frank James was passing through from Nelson county to Brandenburg, in Meade county, on the Ohio river, on his way to Missouri, a number of horses were stolen in Larue county. A posse went in pursuit of the thieves. They traced them to Brandenburg. There they found Frank James. There were four of them when they came up with James, and he was alone, sitting in the office of a hotel. By some means they induced him to come out, and then they told him he might consider himself their prisoner on a charge of horse stealing in Larue county. "By G--d! I consider no such proposition," exclaimed Frank James, as he drew a pistol and commenced firing. In less time than it requires to state the fact, two of the posse lay extended in the embrace of death, and a third was down and writhing in agony. But the fourth man fired a shot into Frank's left hip, and then ran away.