The court, as it seems, would have proved an absolute and inglorious failure had not Owen Davis, the miller, come to its rescue. People far away as the Dutch settlement in Miami, had taken advantage of court day to come to the mill with their grists. Among the number from a distance was a Mr. Smith from Warren county. Mr. Smith had the reputation of helping himself to pork wherever he could find wild hogs in the woods, and Mr. Davis, after having turned out the grist for his Warren county friend, concluded to administer a little “pioneer law” on his own account, while the court was proceeding in a more conventional manner. Accordingly he gave the unfortunate Smith a good drubbing, and as he was an expert Indian fighter, the job, no doubt, was well done. Having finished it, he burst into the primitive courtroom where the judges sat around the deal table in solemn state and awful dignity, with the exclamation-- “Well, I’ll be blanked if I haven’t done it!” “Done what, sir?” inquired associate justice Whiteman. “I’ve whipped that blanked hog thief from down the country, Ben, and I’ve made a good job of it. What’s the damage, anyhow? What’s to pay?” Whereupon he pulled out his purse and counted down a handful of silver coins, while the court looked on with horrified surprise, but said nothing. “Oh, it’s a fact,” he went on, “I’ve whipped him, Ben, and blank you if you’d steal a hog, I’d whip you, too!” This was altogether too much for the court, and the sheriff was ordered to go out and get the witnesses to the affray and take them before the grand jury. The miller’s pugilistic performance, however, had proved contagious, and when the sheriff got outside, he found a free fight going on in all directions, and the grand jurors watching it through the openings in the little out-house. Everybody who had a grievance was settling, or trying to settle it in the regular way, in backwoods fashion, and the grand jury and prosecutor Symmes at once had their hands more than full of business. A score or more of witnesses were examined and by the middle of the afternoon, nine indictments for affray and assault and battery were presented in court, and the offenders, including the owner of the court-house, were arraigned. All plead guilty, beginning with Davis, the first offender, who was assessed a fine eight dollars, and the rest four dollars each. All paid their fines upon the nail, so that the court, owing to the fortunate visit of the Warren county man, found itself in funds to the amount of forty dollars before early candle lighting. The rest of the business of the court, including a license to Peter Borders, to conduct a “tavern” in the court-house, with all the word implied, for which he was taxed eight dollars, was finished before bed time, and the court was ready to adjourn at an early hour next morning.