The tidal wave effervesced at intervals clear to the Colorado district. Perched on a hill in the hemlock woods, Babylon was the rendezvous of sports, strumpets and plug-uglies, who stole, gambled, caroused and did their best to break all the commandments at once. Could it have spoken, what tales of horror that board-house under the evergreen tree might recount! Hapless wretches were driven to desperation and fitted for the infernal regions. Lust and liquor goaded men to frenzy, resulting sometimes in homicide or suicide. In an affray one night four men were shot, one dying in an hour and another in six weeks. Ben. Hogan, who laughed at the feeble efforts of the township-constable to suppress his resort, was arrested, tried for murder and acquitted on the plea of self-defence. The shot that killed the first victim was supposed to have been fired by “French Kate,” Hogan’s mistress. She had led the demi-monde in Washington and led susceptible congressmen astray. Ben met her at Pithole, where he landed in the summer of 1865 and ran a variety-show that would make the vilest on the Bowery blush to the roots of its hair. He had been a prize-fighter on land, a pirate at sea, a bounty-jumper and blockade-runner, and prided himself on his title of the “Wickedest Man in the World.” Sentenced to death for his crimes against the government, President Lincoln pardoned him and he joined the myriad reckless spirits that sought fresh adventures in the Pennsylvania oil-fields. In a few months the Scripture legend—“Babylon has fallen”—applied to the malodorous Warren town. The tiger can “change his spots”—by moving from one spot to another—and so could Hogan. He was of medium height, square-shouldered, stout-limbed, exceedingly muscular and trained to use his fists. He fought Tom Allen at Omaha, sported at Saratoga and in 1872 ran “The Floating Palace”—a boat laden with harlots and whiskey—at Parker. The weather growing too cold and the law too hot for comfort, he opened a den and built an opera-house at Petrolia. In “Hogan’s Castle” many a clever young man learned the short-cut to disgrace and perdition. Now and then a frail girl met a sad fate, but the carnival of debauchery went on without interruption. Hogan put on airs, dressed in the loudest style and would have been the burgess had not the election-board counted him out! A fearless newspaper forcing him to leave Petrolia, Hogan went east to engage in “the sawdust swindle,” returned to the oil-regions in 1875, built an opera-house at Elk City, decamped from Bullion, rooted at Tarport and Bradford and departed by night for New York. Surfeited with revelry and about to start for Paris to open a joint, he heard music at a hall on Broadway and sat down to wait for the show to begin. Charles Sawyer, “the converted soak,” appeared shortly, read a chapter from the Bible and told of his rescue from the gutter. Ben was deeply impressed, signed the pledge at the