This bait took "capitally," as Van used to say, and not only were two hundred shanties built, but the praise of the "ginerous contractors" was in every mouth; and "Hurrah for Lofin, Van Stingey, & Co.," became a regular toast among the men, as they went to spend a shilling in the company's grocery store. The shanties were now up, and the horses, three hundred in number, all ready for work; but a week, and another, and a third passed on, and not a sod of ground was broke on the ten miles of our independent company's contract. Here was now a sad and alarming spectacle. Thousands of men, women, and children, seduced into a wilderness by the specious promises of these vile knaves; and now, after having spent every penny they had earned for years, brought to the very verge of starvation. Some were obliged to trade off and sell their clothes for food; others had to open small retail groceries to keep themselves and their neighbors from starving. The more independent in circumstances were obliged to mortgage their horses and carts for provisions and fodder; and all had, as far as their means went, to patronize the new store opened by the contractors, who retailed provisions and groceries, to those who had any thing to lose, at a profit of one hundred and a quarter per cent. on their original cost. For three months this was the state of things on the contract of our _honorable_ company. Works not yet commenced, men and horses half starving, occasional murmurs among the most knowing of the hands--which murmurs were, however, soon allayed by the representations of the bosses and their countryman Mr. Lofin, who pledged _his honor_ as a "gintlemon that the whault lied intirely with the directors, and the _faurmuns_, who refused to settle for the right uv way." The mystery was soon cleared up by the appearance on the ground of Messrs. Van Stingey, Lofin, & Whinny, with fifteen constables, who laid an injunction on all the shanties, and quietly, revolver in hand, drove off the three hundred horses to the county town, to secure those contractors in their pay for the debt into which they brought all those men whom they got to deal in their store, or who had any property. This is the way thousands of men were deceived, betrayed, and robbed of all they possessed in the wide world. And this is the way in which Messrs. Van Stingey, Timens, Kitchins, Whinny, & Lofin supplied themselves with horses, carts, shanties, and all other necessaries for carrying on the work according to agreement. The plan had so far succeeded; the only question now was, how to deprive these poor men of all legal redress, and have them exterminated from the neighborhood. This was not difficult to effect with poor men who were half starved, and who had to look out for work somewhere else for the support of their families. Those men who had the means left had quitted this cursed ground already, and Mr. P. Lofin struck on an expedient by which others, the more bold, were soon